When Twitter first made the announcement that the Lists feature was coming, my first thoughts were about how great that would be to organize the Twitter stream. It has worked out as such. It’s a great way to separate the people you follow into groups.

For example, if I want to keep marketers, news organizations, sports stars, musicians, and my actual real-life friends all separate from one another, I can do that. It’s a great way to reduce the "noise" that has commonly been associated with Twitter. You can look at a custom-made list and simply get tweets related to a certain category. It’s very much like organizing a feed reader into different folders.

2. Changing the News

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore wrote a pretty interesting piece for CNN about how Twitter Lists are already transforming online journalism. Journalists are using friends to filter massive amounts of data through lists. Again, it’s about noise reduction.

Vadim Lavrusik also discusses ways news organizations are using Twitter lists. He looks at how different publishers are creating staff directories, recommending "tweeps" and specific information, using lists for curated real-time steams, and to follow events.

3. Directories

Mike Butcher points out that Simplezesty is creating lists of Twitter users in entire countries. This is a concept that could be taken by anybody to run wild with, particularly with regards to niches. Lists are essentially an organization tool, so anything can be broken down into categories.

Let’s say you are a restaurant critic. You could create separate lists for the best pizza places, the best burger joints, the best bars, the best Mexican restaurants, etc. This could be applied to virtually any industry.

Shameless plug: Of course our own Twellow.com has served a similar purpose and more for quite some time, and it’s already pretty well-established, so you if you’re looking for people to follow by industry, I suggest checking that out.

4. A New Way of Interaction

Look at what the NHL had done. Jennifer Van Grove points to a Tweet from the National Hockey league, which called upon fans to tweet @NHL their favorite team with a specific hashtag. The purpose was to create lists fans by team.

I can see a lot of potential for this type of thing too. I could see such a thing being turned into a game, or being used by businesses for promotions, contests, etc.

5. Popularity Contests and Paid List Spots?

I would have to imagine that people are going to covet spots on certain lists. It’s potentially going to be a great way to get new followers, so people are going to want to appear on the lists of influential Twitterers.

Could this lead to paying for spots on Twitter lists? I’d actually be shocked if this isn’t already going on to be honest. It’s not much different than the old-fashioned paying for a link. Only in this case, Google isn’t there to keep you out of search results, because here you’re trying to be found on Twitter, not Google.

That actually raises some more questions, however, as Google (and Bing) has recently made a deal with Twitter, which will see Tweets make their way to the search engine. We don’t know yet exactly how this will go, and whether or not lists will ever factor into the Google part of things. Could being on more lists be taken as a sign of authority? I’m only speculating.

6. Exploitation and Spam

Inevitably, Twitter Lists will also be exploited and used for spam purposes. It’s on the Internet and it’s a chance to gain exposure. It pretty much stands to reason than spam will follow. Why would this be any different than any other tool? Valleywag thinks Ellen DeGeneres is already engaging in such tactics. That’s an interesting read.

Are Twitter lists going to change how we get our news? How we find information? How we market our businesses? What do you think? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> By Tweeting, You Could Appear All Over the Web

> Twitter Expands the "Lists" Feature

> Microsoft and Google Score Deals with Twitter

"One of the things our publishers have always asked for are ways to make it even easer to configure their blogs to work with FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds," says Steve Olechowski on behalf of the AdSense for feeds and Blogger teams. We’re happy to announce that Blogger users, with just a few clicks, are able to do both at the same time."

Users can can use AdSense for Feeds for Blogger the same way they set up AdSense on their blogs. Just go to the Blogger Dashboard and select "monetize". This gives the user options for configuring ads. If the user’s blog is already connected to FeedBurner, you can confirm that the proper feed is being configured. AdSense for Feeds will pick the ad size automatically.

Users can view AdSense reports after setup to view feed revenue right from the Blogger Dashboard. You can of course see the reports in your AdSense account as well.

Google launched AdSense for Feedburner last year. This came just after Google closed down the Feedburner Ad Network.

Related Articles:

> AdSense For RSS Feeds Launched

> Google’s New Blogger Features

> Feedburner and Adsense Together at Last

"This feature allows to you filter ads in up to five categories such as Dating, Drugs and Supplements, Weight Loss, and Get Rich Quick," says AdSense for Feeds Product Manager Steve Olechowski. "Your filters will be applied to English-language ads, no matter how they were targeted."

When a user wants these settings to take effect, they should go to the Ad Review Center, and select a Client-ID that starts with ca-feed-pub. This allows the user to select different categories for their feed than for their site. Users must also select filters for both their feed and their site for the filters to be applied to both.

Categories than can be blocked include:

- Cosmetic procedures and surgery
- Dating
- Drugs and supplements
- Get rich quick
- Politics
- Religion
- Ringtones and downloadables
- Sexual and reproductive health
- Sexually suggestive
- Video games
- Weight loss

Only up to five categories can be blocked. Google says its technology will make its "best attempt" to filter ads from the categories above, but it doesn’t guarantee that some won’t slip through.

Here’s a visual overview of what that means:

 "All shared item pages have feeds, and now all of those feeds will ping a hub (and there’s a <link rel="hub" …/> element in them)," explains Mihai Parparita on the Google Reader Blog. "This means that if you (as a web app developer) would like to more efficiently and quickly monitor Reader shares, you just have to subscribe at the hub to be notified of changes in real-time. If you want to learn more about PubSubHubbub and how it works, see the site and protocol definition."

Google names FriendFeed specifically as a place that takes advantage of such pinging. If you have added your shared items to your FriendFeed account, you and your friends will see them there in real-time. This means they will appear in FriendFeed’s real-time search engine.

Adding the PubSubHubbub support was one of the famous 20% projects of a few Googlers. They cite the project as a contributor to making the web a faster place, which of course is a big initiative of Google these days.

Note: There are many different feed readers that offer different options. I am not familiar with all of them. There are also many Twitter applications out there that allow for different kinds of integrations, and again I am not familiar with all of them.

There are similarities and differences between the concepts that are RSS and Twitter. Let’s look at a few of them.

How They Are the Same

- One thing they have in common is that there are a lot of people that don’t understand the purpose of either one.

- Both can bring you a wealth of information that you are interested in receiving into one convenient place.

- Both can keep you up to date with news.

- Both can provide a means of discovering new and interesting content.

- From the content provider’s perspective, both can provide a convenient delivery method.

Did I leave some out? Share some similarities in the comments.

How they Are Different

- Of course, Twitter is a two-way communication tool whereas a feed reader only brings information in. Although some have social features that allow for interaction…Google for example has gotten more social with sharing and commenting features.

- With RSS there is a better chance that content won’t go overlooked. Feed readers put a number on the unread posts. Twitter is a never-ending stream. Granted, you can go to each person’s stream separately, but you won’t see any specific number of unread posts.

- RSS Readers can be organized, broken down into categories…how do you organize Twitter messages (without RSS feeds)?

- With Twitter, you can only subscribe to or "follow" those you find on Twitter. With RSS, you pretty much have the entire web as long as the site offers feeds, which most providing regular content do by now. Most blogging platforms create feeds automatically.

- With feeds, you get a lot more visible content. With Twitter, you get 140 characters. Some feeds allow for full text. With tweets you will always have to follow links to get full content.

- Tweets are real-time. RSS tends to drag behind a bit (at least in my experience).

Did I leave some out? Share some differences in the comments.

Jeff Chandler puts it well (if not bluntly):

"To limit yourself to Twitter instead of RSS is a dumb move because your feedreader provides you the opportunity to see the bigger picture. You get to see many viewpoints instead of just one. You get to see trends outside of what people are talking about. Instead of updates or cool posts from here or their on the web, your feedreader serves the purpose of bringing all sorts of great information from across the web to you in one location."

You can subscribe to Twitter streams as RSS feeds, for better organization, which is another endorsement for RSS. Use a feed reader to organize your Twitter friends’ posts. You can also set up your blog to post to Twitter via RSS.

Will Twitter replace feed readers? I don’t think so. But it certainly could become more mainstream (if it hasn’t already). You could probably find more people on the street that have heard of Twitter than have RSS at this point. But for those who have already been enjoying RSS, you’re going to have a hard time convincing them that Twitter will replace it in their lives.

While similar in some aspects, they are clearly two very different animals. Like blogs and Twitter, there is no reason why they can’t co-exist, and even feed off of each other.

The best links on Twitter often come from people who acquire those links themselves via feed readers. Likewise, a lot of bloggers are gathering information from Twitter to compose their content.

I do think that RSS and Twitter can be used to explain each other to those who don’t grasp the concept of one or the other. If you describe Twitter as "sort of a feed reader" type service, you may drive (at least part of) the point home. If someone doesn’t understand RSS, you might be able to explain it using Twitter as an example. Just a thought.

How it works:

1. Enter at least one RSS Feed

2. Select Your Delivery Options

3. On schedule, they email you a print-ready PDF

Publishers that want their feeds to be compatible with Tabbloid may have to make some adjustments. When I experimented with it to see what our own WebProNews feeds looked like in it, I got the common excerpt format, and for those printing out PDFs to read paper versions, they’re not going to be able to click on "read more", so they’re not going to be able to read the full content.

Publishers that offer full content in their feeds would presumably fit right into this, though I would imagine it would use a whole lot of paper. Amit Agarwal suggests mobile uses:

You may find this very useful if your old smartphone can send & receive emails but has no built-in feed reader. Just get your favorite sites as a PDF file in your email and read the new content at leisure without your laptop.

I don’t know how often people are going to want their feeds in a PDF format, but HP making the option available can’t hurt.

It’s a useful tool for users who are subscribed to a lot of different feeds. It helps you eliminate ones that you may have subscribed to, but never ended up paying much attention to, hence decreasing the clutter in your reader.

They are now giving us a deeper look into not only our own reading habits, but publisher habits as well. A post on the Official Google Reader Blog explains:

We also wanted to expose more fine-grained data. While it’s useful to know what your overall reading trends are, we thought it might be interesting to also display this data on a subscription by subscription level. If you’ve ever been curious about when your favorite subscriptions were publishing new posts or when you were reading them, click the "show details" link in the upper right corner of the viewer. It’s a good way to peak into your personal habits as well as the posting schedule of your favorite blogs. While you’re in there, check out the other details – we also display the last crawl time and any errors encountered during that crawl.

Darnell Clayton at the Blog Herald makes a good point, "What’s interesting about this new feature is that it allows bloggers to see how frequently some of the top (or bottom) blogs post throughout the day/week/month, which may help those striving to break into the coveted “A-list” understand the habits of some of the blogs they frequently read."

For those who just use it for everyday reading purposes, it’s just another way to help keep your reader organized, which we all know grows increasingly difficult the more feeds we subscribe to. It’s like Dolapo at the Google Reader Blog said. Some of us are obsessed with keeping our "items read" as low as possible.