Twitter launched a new aggregation tool called “Lists” today. You follow a list, which has been curated (hopefully) by someone you know or respect, and you follow all of the people on that list.

Robert Scoble, for example, made this list of important tech folk to listen to. Indexing information is a documented problem, but I believe Lists force the user into a decision to use Twitter for information gathering and ground-listening, or to use it socially. Twitter doesn’t excel as a tool for both simultaneously. You can use it to replace your feed reader and listen to Scoble’s 38 new folks, or use it to make snarky comments into the listening void of your friends, but I don’t think it’s a both/and decision.