A couple of weeks ago, Twitter began silently adding a new feature to a very select few users. A feature that, in my opinion, should’ve come long ago. Last week, my personal account received it. Yesterday, almost everyone I know got it and a complete rollout is expected any time now.

It’s an excellent addition to the service even if the idea isn’t all that revolutionary.

The new feature is called Twitter Lists and it’s basically just a filtering system. It allows you to group the users you follow into public or private categories (Lists) and then see only the Tweets in that particular List. For instance, you might want to create List called “family” so you could quickly see the most recent updates from family members without having to scroll back through days and days worth of Tweets trying to differentiate family from non-family.

Other Lists might include media, restaurants or non-profits. (Hint: The Flyer has about 250 categorized local Twitter users in the Twitter Guide.)

A user’s listed link

For a quick start, you could follow our public local news List at @fvilleflyer/news. No, you may not follow all our juicy private Lists. Just kidding, we don’t have any of those. Maybe. Probably. Doubt it. What?

For further help finding Lists to follow, see the newly launched Listorius, which features a collection of Lists in various categories. Or just click on a user’s “Listed” link in the top right for some ideas.

It’s not a new idea but having it integrated directly into Twitter is a major relief for non-power users who don’t use third-party clients like TweetDeck. But third-party clients aren’t left to die in regards to this feature. The Lists API is sure to open a whole new can of gummy worms for developers. Mmm, gummy worms.

Being able to categorize the users you follow makes keeping up with them way easier but the best thing about Twitter Lists is the layer of discovery the new feature adds. Finding and instantly following an entire list curated by someone you trust will speed up the evolution of Twitter and encourage even more interaction.

Have you gotten Twitter Lists yet? If so, whaddya think?