Here’s an idea: a tool (which could be web based, or a browser plug in, or a mobile app; or a feature added to existing Twitter clients such as TweetDeck), which would take the URL of a page with a list of links to people’s Twitter profiles, like the one at http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/twitter, which I set up and maintained in a previous career,
Part of Birmingham City Council's list of Twitter accounts, showing those of parks' rangers
and either subscribe the operator to them all, or do that and then create a Twitter list containing them all.
Optionally, it could first present a checklist, from which individual accounts could be selected, or removed.
Would someone like to make this happen?
If the list were marked up with either data- attributes and/or a rel attribute which grouped accounts together (so that if you posted a list in blog post A and another in blog post B, the plugin wouldn’t subscribe you to all of them, just the list you clicked on), it might work as a WordPress plugin, whereby the user then signs in to follow all those accounts.
Or would it be simpler to create a Twitter list, then use a plugin to turn the URL of the list into an embedded widgety thing on the post or page, which adds in all the necessary markup and lets users subscribe? That way you could update the list without having to update the post.
Hmmm… 🙂
All good thoughts, as usual for you, but I envision a solution which puts the burden on the tool author, rather than the page author, who often has no knowledge/ inclination/ resource/ permission for adding metadata or importing Twitter lists.