It's been a while since we've been truly excited about a new Twitter feature, but last week's Twitter blog post left us truly juiced - Lists are coming to Twitter sometime in the near future.

One of the biggest challenges for Twitter users is discovering other Twitter users to follow - this is why #FollowFriday got started in the first place - so that Twitter users could recommend other Twitter users to their followers. Basically #FollowFriday was a way of creating ad-hoc lists of Twitter users, and Friday was the day that the Twittersphere chose to do it.

With Twitter's upcoming "lists" feature, every day is going to become #FollowFriday. Basically, the main idea of the feature is that Twitter users can create "lists" of other users - these lists are publicly viewable by default but can be made private through preferences. Each user can create several topical lists - for example, one list of "breaking news" feeds to follow, one list of politically active Twitterers - the only limitation is the mind of the person creating the list. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to those lists and receive updates from the people listed on them.

This is potentially going to have a big impact on how people discover one another on Twitter. One of the problems with #FollowFriday is that it's hard to keep track of Twitter users to recommend during the week, and another problem is that the lists are only really available on Fridays - after that they kind of fall into the ether of old Tweets. Both of these shortcomings will be solved by the creation of built-in lists, which can be added to or modified at any point by the person who created them. Users will have a better way to keep track of the people their Twitter friends think they should be following, and that'll increase the overall connectiveness of Twitter in general.

Of course, a new Twitter feature means that spammers will quickly be seeking ways to abuse the list system. Paid list inclusion is one that springs to mind, although that would have applications beyond spamming; lists created by high profile "whale" Twitterers could potentially increase a listed member's follower count rapidly.

We're not completely sure yet how the feature is going to be implemented - for example, does subscribing to a list mean that you're automatically following everyone on the list, or does it just mean that you're following the list itself? When new members are added to a list you're already subscribed to, will you begin following those users automatically? Will people who've been listed be notified, and how? All of these questions we can expect to be answered by the platform team in the coming days and weeks, and we'll be sure to bring those answers to you as we get them.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go create a list of awesome people to follow on Twitter so I'm ready when the new feature launches.