“Lists are tiny coded messages that mean everything to a targeted audience and nothing to everyone else.”
-Wired Magazine, “To 10 Reasons We Like Lists” #4, 03|2007
“By filtering and condensing, the link blog turns online chaos into a tidy little stack of clickable potential.“
-Rex Sorgatz, “Click to Enter” WIRED 03|2007
Lists are remarkable in their ability to make us feel smarter and more resourceful simply by finding and reading them.
Unused, they are useless, yet they still make the reader feel like they know something more than they did before.
More than ever, a list of resources on the web is a happy island of utopia in a vast sea of noise, confusion, and pre-designed tactics to tear us away from our intended purpose.
Just reading a list evokes comments from readers like “This is the best list of ____ I have ever seen!”
Yet few comments are ever registered about the specific rewards people have gotten out of putting these lists to use!
People like lists whether they use them or not.
When I encounter a good top 10 list, I bookmark it and feel as though my arsenal of knowledge and power has grown… by exactly 10.
I may never have an occasion to sit down that click all 10 links in the future, but I have collected them and they are ready to do me good whenever I should need them.
Collecting resources is like saying “I have no time whatsoever to learn this stuff now, but I will bookmark it for later.”
Did you get anything out of the last list you forwarded to your friends and associates? “No, but I could if I wanted!”
The bottom line for bloggers is this:
Lists have intrinsic value in and of themselves. People love lists because they are “tidy” and quickly consumable.
They give readers the power to feel as though simply boomarking them gives them the knowledge and power of knowing everything the information contained in the links…
…regardless of whether they actually follow the links and learn now, later, or at all.
Lists bring loyal readers.
Almost everyone enjoys a good list and when you are known for continually having the best lists in your niche, you become the authority in that niche.
Google has the biggest list on the web. Still think people hate lists?