• April 1st, 2008
• Filed in
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  • Shameless Promotion
  • Work

Recently I blogged about Controlling Your Online Persona which was the inspiration for this method I’m employing for aggregating my tweets across multiple Twitter accounts.

Recently I’ve been using Twitter more and more. What was initially an annoyance of a service (first time I saw a tweet about having to take a deuce I checked out) has become my office water cooler from my virtual home office where I spend my days toiling away working on the pipes of the interwebs.

Initially when I signed up for Twitter back in March of 2007 I chose a different moniker “ky“ because the big thing about Twitter was that you could use it on your cell with SMS. I figured if people were going to txt me via twitter that “ky” would be a hell of a lot easier to type than “somedirection” so I went with it.

I think Twitter as a service is starting to catch on - even Obama has 2 channels: BarackObama and ObamaNews. Seeing that use of twitter was probably the first time I thought - hey Twitter is mainstream. Obama is using technology in his campaign exceptionally well I might add. But I digress..

I realized recently that I don’t want to be boxed into the “ky” username. It’s nice to have and people recognize me (once they see my avatar) but it’s not me, it’s not my brand. So I went about changing this and stumbled upon the realization that Twitter actually handles for multiple Twitter personas quite nicely.

The Primary User Method on Twitter

1. You need a unique email address for each name
2. Choose 1 handle as your master account from which you’ll send all updates. For me I’m going to stick with ky because it’s what I started with and I have a handful of followers.
3. Create your other usernames. For my purposes I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t lose somedirection, nor did I want one of my clones to snatch KyleBradsaw from my grasp.
4. Now here’s how you can funnel people into your primary username. For myself I have just 1 tweet for both users somedirection and KyleBradshaw “DBA @ky”. This will give the surfer a link directly to my primary account while also letting them know that the account they’re looking at isn’t where I update.
5. Now ONLY follow your primary account from your alternate(s). Every time you twitter under your primary account and some one visits one of your alternate handles, when they look under the “With Others” tab they will see all of your primary holders’ tweets!

Each user can have it’s own style. I like having a couple of different looks across all of my users.

Initially I was thinking I’d have to kill off ky goodnesss for somedirection to keep my brand in tact, but this is a suitable workaround and I can have the best of both worlds. While I was at it I also grabbed KyleBradshaw for good measure. If Twitter becomes popular like myspace or gmail I’ll be glad I did.

Popularity: 11% [?]

• March 30th, 2008
• Filed in
  • Shameless Promotion

I’ll be honest here - I hold my personal brand with utmost value. When you live on the internet for work and play as much as I do there is a lot of “you” out there and often times it can be problematic. More than once, I’ve had a case of mistaken identity due to the fact my full name is not entirely unique.

Misinformed Crazies Will Find You

Most recently a high schooler found “Kyle Bradshaw” on Facebook - she must’ve had an online romance or something because she was heated mad at “Kyle Bradshaw” when she discovered he was a 26 year old computer GEEK living in Boston with a girlfriend and a cat named Cleo. She had basically gone from mild mannered high school girl to private investigator extraordinaire picking apart my online identity in her own estrogen-enhanced personal drama. Although it’s not very hard, she was no Matlock - a simple google query will land you here without struggle. The transcript of the entire ordeal is available here for those interested.

As unnerving as the whole experience was at the time I don’t regret having my life out there in the ether. I did get paranoid that my address was published on my resume so I quickly pulled that for fear of psychotic-high-school-girl-obsessions. Maybe I’d get a severed parakeet head in my mailbox or something - I dunno. Either way that drama broke the camels back.

The Importance of Having a Persona

It is very important to the type of work I do to be “out there”. However, on the grand scale of things I am a fairly private person for someone that has their life so publicly available. I want to control as much as my personal brand as possible because the Internet has an exceptional memory. I always consider the potential implications of anything I publish, pictures I upload, messages I post, etc. Some people don’t seem to give a rats ass about such things but it’s important to me. Good Karma, Good Reputation, Respectability and Honesty are things that I strive for.

To boot if you want to be recognizable out there you need an appealing, memorable moniker. Whether you’re notasausage, or you go by made up words like adactio it’s important that you have your own voice to differentiate yourself from the millions of Internet citizens.

Online, my handle is somedirection. Why? Not because Kyle060481 sounded too cool for school, but because I identified with it. I started as nodirection back in my college days because by my 3rd year I realized that I didn’t want the degree that I originally set out to get, then I graduated! Thus SOMEdirection was born. I’m not entirely sure what the next step in my username evolution will be honestly (haha). I just know that I love what I do and I’m going to keep doing it as long as it’s paying the bills.

With the creation of handle/alias/moniker sometimes people don’t identify you as your name but as your handle. I found this was the case for me before I went to South By Southwest in Austin where I finally met my colleagues face to face. Stop Design became Douglas Bowman, Clagnut became Richard Rutter, Slayer Office became Steve Chipman, Mezzoblue became Dave Shea, sometimes you discover new acquaintances are NOT sausages - you get the point.

Beyond the “name” there’s also a huge opportunity to brand a logo as yourself. These can be instantly recognizable if done right. Inman, Haney, and Moll come to mind. I was quite surprised the other day when I went to view ObamaNews [pic] on Twitter and stood out to me like a sore thumb instantly. I was very surprised I even noticed it but I shouldn’t be - it’s light blue color is loud but not overbearing and it stands out from its neighbors in its simplicity.

I need to get a logo that stands by itself and can be instantly recognizable. I’ve put it off for so long because I can never make anything cool enough that I would want to represent me (I would love to hire a talented designer to help me with this).

Persona Evolution

The creation of a handle itself comes with responsibility. There are numerous “Kyle Bradshaw”s out there, but only one somedirection. It’s important that this username represents me everywhere I sign up for a new service, comment on a blog, or join a forum.

Do you have any thoughts good or bad about online personas? Do you have one already or are you planning on creating one? Do you even care how you are perceived on the net? Feedback greatly appreciated.

Popularity: 7% [?]