The Effective CIO

Living In Multiple Worlds June 26, 2009

This is the third of three articles recounting the separation of my personal and professional Twitter streams.  The first dealt with why, the second with how, and here I share the end result.

In most good experiments, you tend to learn a lot more than you intended about things you never considered before you began.  This was certainly the case in my project to separate my single Twitter account into two streams, an open professional stream and a private personal one. Some pertinent discoveries, in no particular order:

• Dividing your account is not complicated, but it can be confusing.  I had to pay attention to make sure I did not alter the wrong account at the wrong time. You also need a lot of email addresses; Twitter requires a unique email address for each account. I don’t understand why, but it will make life complicated for those who cannot readily create a handful of addresses to support their new accounts.
• Current Twitter tools are just starting to become adept at managing multiple accounts.  Thankfully, the new version of TweetDeck was released soon after I began my adventure.  This new version makes multiple account management much easier on both my desktop and iPod Touch.  PockeTwit provides some nice multi-account features on my Windows Mobile phone.
• Having a locked personal account dramatically reduces Twitter spam.  This alone made the transition worthwhile.
• I had to find a way to gently steer people who followed my personal stream to my professional stream.  Since you can’t DM someone unless they are following you, I have to allow them to follow my personal account, DM with a request to switch to my professional account, and then drop them from my personal account.  This doesn’t always work; people seem to make the switch about half the time.
• It is annoying that I can only associate my phone with one account.  I understand that tweets sent from my phone via SMS can only be sent to one Twitter account, but I’d like to have tweets from both accounts delivered to my phone.  Anyone at Twitter listening?
• I got a lot of interest from people who were confronted by this same problem.  A few (@BevBrown/@RunnerBev and @BruceCarlson/@CarlsonSpeaking) have also gone down this path.  Many others are deciding if this kind of change suits them, and how the idea fits into the overall philosophy of open social media. (Credit goes to @BevBrown for coining the phrase “Twitter splitter.”)
• I am very grateful to those followers who made the leap and refollowed my on my private account.  I am also grateful to those who put up with the confusion along the way.  I was surprised by those who thanked me for bringing them along to my new account. I learned that for those of us who have developed real relationships through Twitter, the follower/following relationship is an important connection that is not to be trifled with.  It’s not like we’re going steady or anything, but it is certainly more than a passing connection.

With all said and done, was it a Good Thing?  For me, absolutely.  I feel like I can be much more focused in my professional persona, and a little more relaxed in my private one.  As Bruce Carlson shared with me, you can “keep up with your friends better and there seems to be less pressure.”

Ideally, this kind of content stratification should be native to the tools.  Someday it will be.  Until then, we need to make do with what we have at hand.  That’s what drove this process for me; I hope you find my detailed explanation useful as you seek the right balance point in your social media world.