Not everyone is able to use Lists yet. (They opened up the beta to the mad tweeps such as myself today). Why are lists good? You can now do all the following you like, and then when you're ready to read just the junk you actually care about (like Facebook's hide feature in their newsfeed) you can now just see those peoples tweets. It's a filter for the fire hose.
Now here's the kicker. You can share lists, and if you're IN a list, that number will now appear with your other popularity stats like followers and updates. Congratulations popular people, you will now have another number by which to measure your awesomeness.
We'll have to see how this plays out.
