Twitter Alter Egos

On the day my @sciencebase account on Twitter reached 5000 followers (2009-07-31), I’d sent out 5138 tweets, goodness knows how many direct messages, dozens of #followfridays, hundreds of retweets and whatever else. I was following 1760 other people and had blocked countless spammers, marketers and pr0nographers, who fell at one or other hurdle in my twitter decision flowchart.

On the same day, I revisited Ari Herzog’s blog where he waxed lyrical on why he’d abandoned one twitter account and started a second and why amassing followers without engaging with them as people is pointless. Several other hot bloggers and highly followed twitter users have done the same, among them marketing guy Jim Connolly.

Now, before anyone starts getting worried that I might be ditching twitter, I’m not. The Sciencebase twitter account will remain fully functional for the foreseeable future. However, I’ve now activated the twitter ID for sciencetext, which was previously set to protected mode. I then picked a bunch of my closest virtual buddies, almost at random, and followed them from that account. tweeting all the while to explain what was happening. At the time of writing, the majority had followed back.

I’m not intending to ring-fence the sciencetext twitter account. But, I wanted a way to engage with the people I already engage with most on twitter without the great stream of tweets from everyone else. It’s not that I value those other tweets any less. Indeed, one’s genuine followers are a good enough reason to tweet in the first place. The majority, however, seem to like to read and retweet my stuff without chatting to me directly about it, which is great too.

Some twitter friends just happen to be closer than others and specifically closer than distant acquaintwances. Generally, having a few pints in the pub is a much better way to have a good chat than trying to be heard and to hear in a crowded conference venue, figuratively speaking.

They also say that a large proportion of new twitter users, who may or may not follow you early on, actually abandon the service never to return, so a lot of one’s followers may not actually be in the room for engagement, anyway.

I guess I could have simply created a filtered group in Tweetdeck, but this way I actually get to start afresh without the effort of filtering. So, on July 31, when sciencebase was clicking over the 5000 follower mark, I started to follow some of my good twitter buddies (including @robaitken who asked me which account was that of Dr Jekyll and which of Mr Hyde) from my sciencetext account. Thankfully, most started to follow me back.

At the time of writing I was readying for a family vacation, and have not yet caught up with all those sciencebase buddies with whom I’d like to chat over a virtual pint more closely. So, if you’re reading this and wondering why I haven’t lifted the velvetine rope so you could enter the inner sanctum do drop me a line, leave a comment or tweet me, and I’ll be sure to connect as soon as I can.

Others are welcome too, of course, just remember to step up to the bar when it’s your round and if you fall at any hurdle in my twitter flowchart, I just may not get you one back when it’s my shout

One additional thought I had as I was typing that last sentence, is that I could set a limit on how many people sciencetext will follow and maybe unfollow those twitterers with whom I end up not engaging quite as much as I initially hoped here. But, that could start to get a bit nerdy and like the unfriending concept on Facebook maybe hurt people’s feelings…so I am reluctant to go that route, even if Rob thinks I am Dr Jekyll on one account and Mr Hyde on the other…up to you, dear tweeps, to decide which…