Robert Scoble raised an interesting point last week regarding the unintentional transparency that Twitter’s new List feature will create. Specifically, that as individuals find themselves on company specific lists, the collective “feel” of the organization becomes public, whether the company likes it or not.

Let’s say someone create a list for your company. Useful right? You might think so, until you realize that your company just got shoved into a very crowded room, naked. All of the individuals, with their individual tastes, opinions, weird hobbies, etc. now collectively represent your public face. For companies like Mashable (one of the first lists created), no big deal – their writers live in public and are well versed in the ways of social media. But what would Carol Bartz think about the thousands of Yahoo’s coming into the spotlight?

Or imagine you're the owner of the Houston Oilers?

We’ll see a lot more company policies and a lot more censorship in what used to be a personal media. Like it or not, we’re on the clock 24x7 and Twitter is going to get a little more bland. Maybe you’ve already caught on to the fact that Twitter is a very public place where censorship must be considered. Or maybe you’ve created another account for your personal rants, but count on the fact that it WILL be tied to your company or brand.

Lists are awesome, don’t get me wrong. Long-time Twitter users knew it was a forgone conclusion as our following lists got too big to be useful. Either be very selective about who you follow or get really good at filtering noise. My point is, this is a big move in transparency and you need to be aware of it.

Good companies who hire good people will be OK. People will become acceptant of the fact that we’re all just people and not cast collective judgment due to a few peculiar tweets from an employee – but expect to see many more stories about people getting into hot water over their personal web space as it becomes easier to see employees as groups.

There’s an opportunity here also. I toyed with the idea of creating a quick tool to clean up your twitter stream. Load your entire history and allow for quick manicuring (already possible on twitter.com but a little cumbersome). Add some features for basic online reputation management and integrate a few Google Alerts and you’d have a popular and welcome tool. I’m currently wrapped up in a much bigger project, so I won’t be taking on the task – but if anyone is interested I may be willing to advise and provide the tidystream.com domain.

Here’s hoping the self-censoring doesn’t become an issue and Twitter remains spontaneous and fun!

Justyn

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/justyn