Product Reviews
This is a perfect example of a 'listicle' that would be so much better on Listium.
First, the ability to switch views mean the list own could work on the list in, say, table view but then switch it to article view for publishing.
Visitors could then do all of the following, none of which they can do on Medium:
- change the view;
- sort;
- change the grouping (eg. from rating to brand or price range);
- filter;
- suggest new items;
- make a copy so they can make notes and use it as a research tool.
And soon, users will be able to follow that list and be notified of when it is updated. On Medium you can follow a user, but not an article.
Reddit is home to a lot of whisky lovers, and many of them invest a lot of time in writing reviews. This one user has over 500 hundred reviews.
While his reviews are all on Reddit, he has a Google Sheet that acts as the index or directory for all of his reviews.
Listium has the potential to combine two tools into one - a home for the reviews (slideshow view works well for this), and also as an index that can be sorted, filtered, searched, and viewed as a table.
What if we…
- had public commenting, so people could discuss the reviews on Listium?
- made it possible to link to individual items on a Listium list, so that links from Reddit could be to the specific review, not the whole list?
- added an "export item" feature to Listium, where we could make it easy to copy as text or markdown for pasting directly into a Reddit post, so that this user doesn't have to leave Reddit to use Listium, they just use Listium as the place to store all reviews?
Note: Reddit closes ALL threads after 6 months, so the author can't edit their post and users cannot continue discussing them. Listium would not do this.
No Background provided
This list has not been shared anywhere. I created it as a demo of a new feature we have been testing where a list can have its cover image replaced by a YouTube video, and that video can be watched while browsing the list.
Product Database
I made this list while researching RC crawlers. I feel like this list shows low Listium could be used as the "PC Parts Picker" for hobbies that are too small to have their own PC Parts Picker.
Another personal list that I used just for research purposes.
We have a bot that alerts us to all Google Sheets that are shared on Reddit. From time to time I make a Listium list out of one of the spreadsheets to show to the original poster. (I keep the lists private until told I can share them).
This post, which linked to a Google Sheet, looked like a good candidate for Listium.
In this case Listium is NOT the best tool for this particular use case.
The owner of the list is the company that sells this product, so they are not going to move their own data onto someone else's website.
Also, they have built their page for exactly the data set that they know they need.
This is, however, an example of how Listium can help anyone build something like this for just about anything they can think of (collection of products, places, people, etc) without needing their own website or any tech skills.
Listium is a "no code" tool for making something equal to or, in some cases, better than what this company has spent thousands of dollars making for themselves. Now anyone can create a collection like this for no cost.
This list was to solve a personal problem, in that I was having trouble finding a single "source of truth" when it comes to what games were coming out for the next generation Xbox. The data was all over the internet, but you had to check multiple sites to get different bits of information (eg. some sites had all the Game Pass games in a list, others had all the X|S optimised games, yet others listed the Xbox exclusives.) There was no single list that had everything.
Also, most lists were published in blog posts that were never updated once they were posted, meaning one of the first things you had to do when visiting a page was check the date to ensure it was at least reasonably up to date. Some pages didn't have a date, making it almost impossible to know whether the data was accurate.
One of the features we are planning is the ability to follow a list. This list is exactly the type of list that would be perfect for that feature. Imagine following this list and being notified of new game announcements, updated release dates, etc. This is something I am very excited about for this list, and for many like it.
The Reddit VR community is a bit split on whether they should maintain this in this Google Sheet or this wiki. Listium would be another good option, but even better with some new features.
Listium would be a great place for this list, and would be even better with some (most?) of our planned features such as:
- public comments;
- following;
- linking to items.
Possibly even more important than any of these is the potential new feature of better permissions for lists, giving communities more control over how they build and update lists.
Here are just some of the comments from this thread about difficulties maintaining one or both of those lists:
People are totally capable of editing the list I was maintaining as that was the point. But if they want to take over I hope they stay on it and I hope they will continue to maintain it.
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It is not really out of date, its actually continuously updated. Its unfortunate that we have two list now as we could have updated that one but the new one is nice looking. I hope they will keep it going as it is a wonderful resource for everyone.
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it’s much easier in a spreadsheet form.
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You should put this on the wiki or ask the mods if there is no access.
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I asked for access…
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Thank you. The spreadsheet has been updated.
I think there is a real opportunity to create a tool that is designed for communities who want to grant various levels of access to different people. For example, one thing you cannot do on a spreadsheet is allow someone to add a new row but not edit an existing row. You have to create a form for that, but then the user cannot edit an entry after it is submitted via the form.
One of Listium's Directors was following this forum thread, and decided to start compiling a list of the DAC's mentioned in the thread.
This is an ideal use-case for the new Listium. Forum threads (as well as twitter threads) are regularly used to compile "lists", yet they are structured very differently. That is, a forum thread has a couple of key characterists:
- you can post anything that is on-topic, even if it is not an item to go on a list;
- it is ordered chronologically, sometimes with threaded replies and sometimes not.
This means that anyone wanting to find information in the thread has a lot of work to do, possibly having to read the full thread to answer questions like:
- what items have been suggested;
- how many people have suggested each item;
- what are people's opinions on each item;
- etc.
This is not the fault of the forum, it's just that forums where built for discussions, not to compile lists.
Other list related features that are on Listium, but not on a discussion forum, include:
- Listium's structure means you can add a variety of data fields to the list, in turn allowing lists like this to be filtered based on features, price, etc.
- Listium is well structured for organic search.
When Listium adds discussions we will have the best of both words - ie. a list and a discussion forum. That is:
- each item will only be included on the list once, instead of potentially appearing multiple times throughout a forum thread;
- we will add fields to our lists so that people can vote on items, meaning the popular ones are easily seen rather than having to read through the full thread to see which items are mentioned the most;
- discussions of each item on the list will be grouped together, again meaning you don't have to read pages of posts in date order;
Personal Collection
I used this list to let my parents know which sets Zoe (my daughter) owns so, for birthday or Christmas, they don't buy her one that she already has.
Adel is an avid stamp collector, and she uses desktop software to manage her collection. However, she wanted something that was more focused on aesthetics and publishing so she could show her collections to other people. She found Listium.
Directory of Places
I saw this list on Reddit and thought it would be a great candidate for Listium. I made a version of the list (not complete as it has missing images) just as a demo.
Similar story to the Museums list.
I was a member of a Facebook group for RC crawlers long before I created this list. When I was looking for locations to use my car I found that they only source of locations in the group was a thread containing pasted screenshots from Google Maps. So I created this list and shared it with the group.
Checklist
This list was one of the first lists that proved that SEO would work for Listium. Initially we created this list and shared it in a thread related to a similar list.
I made this list for my own use as I was playing Stardew Valley with my daughter a while back. I shared it on Reddit just in case anyone was interested.
Directory of People
A friend shared the Google Sheet with me and suggested it would be a great candidate for Listium. It is a public Google Sheet, with links to it from inside this Facebook Group.
I created a couple of lists, including the one pictured, and even recorded a video demo of how it could be used.
The original spreadsheet was published on 19 August 2020, and discussed in a Medium article.
I created a Listium version of the list but it is not fully populated.
This list was created by someone who was working on Listium with me for a few weeks. The list was created based on he contents of a Twitter thread. It was mainly to show that we aren't just a replacement for spreadsheets and listicles, but also for tweetstorms and forum discussions when the point of the discussion is to create a list.
Research & Planning
I made this list while researching RC crawlers. I had decided (based on the RC Crawler Research List also mentioned on this page) to buy a TRX-4, but there were a lot of decisions still to be made about which model and which upgrades.
I feel like this list shows low Listium could be used as the "PC Parts Picker" for hobbies that are too small to have their own PC Parts Picker.
Ideas & Tips
I needed a place to store and share some of the experiments we are running around specific lists, and I needed all of the following:
- image storage for screen shots
- long text to describe the experiment
- a range of fields for categorisation, ratings, etc
This is not the perfect list for Listium, but I think there are reasons for it to be an interesting example. See below.
Imagine this list with the ability to:
- follow the list, and receive notifications every time Ben adds a new idea to the list. ("I’ll share my learnings in a series of tweets over the next few weeks, so feel free to tag along or ask questions.") ;
- discuss individual items on the list, so that discussions of each item are kept clear and do not get mixed in with replies that relate to different items on the list;
- tweet the list, and then tweet each item on the list as a reply to the original tweet. You still get all the exposure of having the tweets on Twitter, but have the data on Listium. This would negate the need for this reply that called in the threadreaderapp.
I saw this Twitter thread from a designer who I follow. I thought this would look much better on Listium than on Twitter, and would also benefit greatly from a couple of new features we have planned.
The author of this list planned to post 50 ideas in this thread. He never made it that far. I plan to reach out to find out why, but my guess is that he realised that a Twitter thread was maybe not the best place for information like this. (Or maybe he just ran out of ideas or forgot!).
If we have a following feature, people could follow this list and be notified of every new tweet. He would not be relying on the Twitter algorithm to show it to the right people.
Also, with public commenting on Listium (with commenting at the item level, not just the list level) it would be much easier for his followers to discuss each item in their own separate discussion. Twi
Directory (Events)
I was too late on this, only discovering the spreadsheet after the event. :(
It's a great example of where a spreadsheet was used, but clearly Listium would have been better because of our fields and also Google Maps integration.