Over the last few hours we’ve seen the newish Twitter lists feature disabled and vanish from our screens only to return again apparently completely back to normal. It caused ‘Twitter Lists’ quickly became a high trending topic and quite a lot of concern for many.

During the outage I spent some time meeting with Brenton Cannizzaro from an amazing digital agency in Adelaide, enpresiv, which came about entirely from a Twitter connection and my inclusion on one of his lists. Whilst I’ve now got his business card and therefore his personal details, prior to that, the only place I had stored his details were on Twitter - if they vanished, so too would Brenton from my database.

All is obviously good now with Twitter Lists and it was only a tiny window of downtime but, it got me thinking about what would happen if:

a) Twitter lists never came back

or

b) Lists returned but some of the people on it had been deleted or altered in some way

All that hard work categorising your friends on Twitter, creating a list that had just totally vanished and there’d be little you could do about it because you don’t have any control over Twitter.

It also reminded me I’d promised to post some highlights from Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith so this first one fits perfectly:

The authors talk about the importance of social networks and working at connecting with people on the web as a means of increasing opportunities for you / your business / organisation.

You Live or Die by Your Database

This section discusses your own personal database of connections, the representation of your personal network in a searchable form. Even if you’re a cog in a corporate machine, if you’re not in the business of building your own database of contacts, then you have to start. Now.

…one’s personal database was an asset as valuable as gold, if nurtured and maintained.

However, they stress it is important to maintain your own database away from online platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Why?

Because you can never fully trust that your database online will be accessible, that your account will stay up, and that your data or account won’t become corrupt.

To us, storing a local copy ensures that you control the database at all times. If, as we say, you live or die by your database why would you trust a third party with its ultimate intergity.

So, the short lived AWOL Twitter Lists are back but what would happen if your LinkedIn contacts vanished? If you’d like to start your own personal database, here are some tips from the book that might help you get you started:

What should go into a personal database?

• First name
• Last name
• Title
• Company
• Email
• Phone number (preferably cell phone)
• URL
• State/Province where you reside
• Notes

Written by Sarah Thomas, Managing Director, Carve Consulting (Australia)

I found a great resource today: The Top 100 Best Social Media Books, ever by Jurgen Appelo which is a pretty impressive feat considering he’scovered everything the novice to the expert might be intersted in and rated them all against several criteria.

I came across this list thanks to David Meerman Scott, who has no less than two books in the top 10 and (for our Australian readers) will be out in Aus in September to conduct social media masterclasses - a great opportunity to hear from the author of bestselling World Wide Rave and the new rules of Marketing and PR.
Great to see Melbournian, Darren Rowse, come in at Number 14 with Pro-Blogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income - a must for anyone who’s serious about making money out of blogging.

But if you are intersted in learning about social networks from a business and corporate point of view and how to use these tools to build and manage your reputation online you might want to have a look at Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents which I’m looking forward to reading when it arrives on my doorstep from Amazon. He’ll also be speaking this September (it’s a busy month down under) with Darren Rowse, and a heap of other other social media gurus like Laurel Papworth aka silkcharm, at the Marketing Now! conference.