Ah, “personal branding.” Definitely a topic worthy of a straw poll.
I’ve been thinking about changing my Twitter name. Why would I do that?
The usual response I get when I meet Tweeting folk is one of surprise — “oh that’s you? I had no idea!” So that’s not good. Plus, I find that @spaghetti_p is pretty long. Including the @ symbol, it’s 11 characters, and I’d rather something less than 10. Finally, it’s kind of dumb and I’m pretty tired of it.
So why did I choose it in the first place? It was a halfhearted attempt at carrying something from the name of this blog over into my Twitter presence. (It’s hard to be original at 1 a.m. when you are signing up for the latest social site.) Also my real name is extremely generic, so @petersmith was long gone by the time I got to Twitter. As was @smith, @psmith, @smithp.
But it been a long time since I’ve been tweeting as @spaghetti_p. The majority of my followers know me under that username. More significantly, my Twitter presence has the most “reach” on a daily basis – it’s my main “social habit.” It’s the public place where I interact most with others online. So is there a risk in changing it?
At a technical level, I had first thought that the answer would be no. On Twitter.com, all I have to do is change my account settings and automagically, everyone who’s following @spaghetti_p will be following whatever new name I choose. But almost immediately I realized that it’s not that simple — I’ve set up a lot of profiles elsewhere (main public ones listed on this blog’s about page, and I can’t forget internal-to-GC ones also) that point to the URL http://twitter.com/spaghetti_p. It’d take some work to re-point all these — but it’s doable and obviously worth it.
I also came across multiple listings of my Twitter account throughout the ecosystem of apps and services that has grown up around Twitter — quick examples: Topsy, TwitIQ, FavStar, Sency… the list goes on and on. I’ve never heard of most of these & have no idea what they do. And what happens to them if I change my Twitter name – do they also update? Do they break? I suppose mostly it doesn’t matter, they’re just machines.
What’s more important to me is: will folks find this annoying? Will they unfollow? Will they even care? And do I even care what anyone thinks? Mainstream “personal branding” thinking says I should — online is my calling card, and Twitter is the primary channel for that and yadda yadda yadda. But I’m not a product to be managed, ya know? I’m a mere human. So the answer to all of these, even the last one, about which I feel really ambivalent, is: I don’t really know.
So I’ll give up and turn it over to you: should I change my Twitter name?
What's a spaghetti test?
Keep the name, but an actual picture of you. Any pasta-related avatars will be swiftly dealt with.
If you can’t use your name (due to its popularity), I suggest either using “adjective + name” (e.g. CommsPeter) (I know, pretty lame example) or an anagram of your name (which is what I do), such as “This Temper” or one of the 2456 found here: http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=petersmith&language=english-obscure&t=0&d=&include=&exclude=&n=&m=&source=adv&a=n&l=n&q=n&k=1
Luc-Rock and Todd, thanks!
Todd, I have been guilty of a pasta-related avatar before. But it was mostly to tease a certain fellow public servant who was bugging me about my avatar, so that’s excusable ;+)
Luc, thanks for the tip. Mebbe I should become GCpeteyia!
I think you should change it *only* if you can come up with something that better represents you. GCpeteyia is cool, but do you want to only be associated with GCpedia? Your current name makes sense in the spirit of your blog, so I don’t think you should feel like you must change it. That said, if you don’t feel proud saying or writing it, then you may be less inclined to promote your brand.
Besides, now we’re all used to you being @spaghetti_p so we’ll probably end up calling you “@new_handle you know, the guy who used to be @spaghetti_p”.
Thanks Laura – BTW the GCpeteyia thing was *not* serious.
You make a good point about achieving a comfort level with my handle. As it stands, I’m definitively ambivalent about it. If it was my own name, I wouldn’t be – I haven’t spent more than 2 seconds thinking about my name since I was a teenager.
I suppose if I was starting all over again, I’d just use something that more closely approximates my name. This approach requires minimal identity management.
Here’s a Q about changing one’s handle: how long do you think the “@new_handle who used to be @old_handle” phenomena would last? I’m thinking it’d be pretty temporary?
Yes, I’m sure you’re right about it being temporary. I’ve noticed since I read your blog that we do call you by your name more often than @spaghetti_p.
[...] April 2010 by Peter For whatever reason, my little issue with my twitter handle continues to nag away at me. So as of now, it’s being switched. [...]
It only would go to show where there’s will there’s a means. Keep on trying. – What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. – Woody Allen Born 1935
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