When Twitter launched its swipeable, alternative news feeds, based on Twitter lists, last June, it also noted that it was working on a new way to help users find relevant Twitter lists, with a public collection of lists displayed by topic.

Now, Twitter appears to be close to launching that option, with a new List Discovery process spotted in testing.

As you can see in this example shared by @WFBrother (and posted by Matt Navarra), the new option would provide a display of various lists that you can follow, making it easier to connect with different topics of interest across the platform.

Users will be able to search the listings by topic, and follow any streams that they’re interested in.

You could then pin those lists as your alternate feeds, providing more ways to utilize the option.

The listings, at present, seem fairly limited (only from Twitter Moments and verified members), but you would assume that the eventual plan would be to display all public lists within this directory, which could give users a huge range of options to choose from when looking at alternate, topic-focused following options.

Or there could be some further limitation on what lists are displayed. In the main screen above, the second point says that users can create and share lists with others. Right now, you can make your Twitter lists private, meaning all your non-private ones are public – but maybe, in future, there’ll be another option which enables you to publish selected lists into this directory. That could help to ensure that only the better lists make it through.

It’ll also be interesting to see if Twitter looks to moderate the lists in its directory, in order to ensure that users are discovering high-quality, relevant feeds.

That would likely be the ideal scenario, making it a more valuable, useful option. Twitter’s been working to make lists and topics a key element, expanding the focus of the platform beyond simply following people, while also making it easier for new users to discover more relevant content. In that context, moderating this feed would likely be important – but that would also require additional labor commitment. 

We’ll have to wait and see, but it does look to be in the advanced stages of development.