After getting a lot of complaints from people on Twibes lists about being “listed too much,” we started a process of consolidating Twitter lists last night. To consolidate the Twitter lists, we switched several lists (around 2,000) that were generated by Twibes to be following other identical Twitter lists, and deleted the duplicates. If you were on one of the lists, this decreased your “listed” count, but the number of people seeing your tweets will remain the same. People previously listing you were moved to follow another copy of the list.

Today, a lot of people are wondering why their Twitter “listed” count is going down and/or why their lists have disappeared. We apologize if this has caused confusion, it certainly is surprising to see hundreds of lists disappear.

At this point, we’ve stopped consolidating old Twitter lists, so we won’t be deleting any more lists. New lists will follow existing Twitter lists where possible in the future. If you want ownership of your lists back, you can convert them back by visiting Twibes and converting your list back to be your own. We sincerely apologize if deleting your list means the list lost some followers.

Please see our previous posts for more more information:

* How Twibes Lists Work (see #5 for how to convert from following someone else’s list back to having your own).

* YouTube: Why am I on so many Twibes lists?

Thanks everybody for your patience and understanding as we try to find the right balance of convenience and promotion for everybody!

Twibes lists were changed on Sunday 24th January 2010 in response to complaints from many people that they were being listed “too many times.” This post describes the new functionality.

1. Twibes keeps a list of Twitter users organized by keyword tag on Twibes.com.

2. Anyone can join the Twibes lists by tagging themselves.

3. You can also have Twibes copy of the list to your Twitter account.

4. If you were the first person to click “Make Twitter List,” on Twibes, you have the main Twitter list. The list will be created in your name, for example “@adamloving/twibes-socialmedia.” Twibes will add and remove users from the list as they are added and removed from the list on Twibes. If someone else already has the main list, you will be assigned to follow their list (@someone_else/twibes-socialmedia). If they delete their list, another list (possibly yours) will be delegated as the main Twitter list. If necessary, Twibes will assign your account to follow another copy of the same list.

We have to do it this way because the @twibes Twitter account can’t own all the Twitter lists. There is a limit of 20 Twitter lists per account. We assign people to follow someone else’s Twitter list to reduce the number of duplicate lists (there were many complaints about inflated Twitter list membership counts).

5. If you do not want to follow someone else’s Twibes list, click one of the “Convert” links on your Twibes account page. Log in to Twibes, click “Profile,” then click “Edit Twitter Lists” from the right hand side.