Why Twitter? Why Twitter lists?

You are all smart and wise enough to know if and why you might want to use Twitter or not. Lists in particular can be helpful if you have a free monitor and want to keep up with industry news without refreshing your rss-feeds or depending on your equally busy coworkers, personal twitter-friends.

Before Twitter introduced Twitter Lists you had to individually gather together all the people you wanted to follow. To this very day, this is the best but also the most time consuming method. 

If you want to have a Twitter Timeline Stream in your favorite Twitter App (I personally prefer Tweetdeck) of fellow Game Developers or Industry People outside your own radar, you might want to try and follow someone elses list. Use the work others have done to your advantage.

1. Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward @fourzerotwo

http://twitter.com/fourzerotwo/rad-game-developers "Rad video game developers, employees, and people"

Robert is following 64 (sic!) individuals and companies and his list is followed by 144 followers.

fourzerotwo-twitter-gamedev-list

2. Naughty Dog, Santa Monica @Naughty_DOG

http://twitter.com/Naughty_Dog/game-industry-people following 237 individuals and companies, followed by 17 followers

http://twitter.com/Naughty_Dog/game-devs-pubs-and-games following 118 game publishers and game-title related twitter accounts, followed by 19 followers

naughty-dog-game-industry-list

3. Alex Covic (me) @buckybit

http://twitter.com/buckybit/videogame-industry-only "most complete list of the video game industry - Developers, Programmers, PR, Promo, Marketing,..." following 491 (no kids/fans, only a few individual journos), followed by 20.

Disclaimer: I do not work in the industry, so I am not on that list. If the list is of any use is up to you and what you want of it. I would gladly migrate that list to someone from the industry - so it comes from a more trusted source.

game-industry-only-twitter-list

If you know any list like these above - please, let me know. I update my list regularly. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

The Twitter lists have a 500 account cap. Making a B-List would be a dishonor to those on it. But I am playing with the idea to make a US vs Asia vs Europe list - would acknowledge the timezones without insulting anyone being on a 2nd list.

A possible Twitter Business Model?

If there could be a closed Twitter system - where every game industry person would have a verified account and you could have an environment for exchanging thoughts without the noise from outside (people like me or reply-crazy fans) additionally to the regular twitter account, your tweets would be protected from google-search etc, would you consider paying for such a service? 

Of course, Twitter is nothing more than a IM/ICQ chat in many regards, but the openness and the none-obligatory "drop in - drop out" nature of it, makes it appealing ... unless you are in crunch-time, on a deadline, too busy managing your work and private life, already. Granted.