headoftraining.com

Recently, I was cc’d into a tweet discussing people who use their business name as their twitter name. The tweet was (obviously) sending me to the blog of somebody waxing lyrical about one of the finer point of online branding.
Anyway’s I got thinking (and I should admit at this point that I have known about this for some time. I have felt a bit like I have gone to a fancy dress party in the wrong choice of clothes).
Anyways, here is my thinking. Like most things online, thinking moves on.
Unlike most most gurus and wannabes – I signed up for twitter in Feb 2008.
Back then, the thinking was that your user name should represent WHAT YOU DID rather than WHO YOU ARE.
My other dilema
Jonathan is a multi syllable name which is not easily shortened. I am not at all comfortable with “JON” – Missing the “H” out always seems a little pretentious. Jonathan is a bit like “Victoria” or “Alexander” – You can’t easily shout it at someone as they go by without sounding slightly posh. (Like wot I am).
Plus twitter names are NOT readily available – SHORT enough to NOT to intrude on the 140 character limit.


Pooky Hesmondhalgh
This is interesting… I only started tweeting in about November but we had the twitter ID for some time before that… just sitting there dormant… and it used to have an avatar of our logo. I’ve stuck to the company name, but also include my face and real name on my tweets as I agree with you that Twitter is about personal connections. You’ve got me wondering if I should change my name now… but a couple of thousand followers on it probably wouldn’t be such a smart move!
jonathan
Pooky – Interestingly, My good friend @sallyfoleylewis reckons it’s the photo that is the clincher for her. THAT’S the key to being recognized NOT the name.
Anyways, it’s dead easy to change the name – just change the “View publicly as” in the twitter account and open a new account in your OLD name to catch any stray people who miss the change over. (You will need a sep email though).
Good luck & let us know how you get on
jps