The first thing I have noticed is that because the @stevewheeler account is only following a few other Twitter accounts, it is easier to distinguish the signal from the noise. The @timbuckteeth account follows in excess of 1300 other accounts, and it's sometimes difficult to see the wood for the trees. I have discovered that only following a few influential accounts using the @stevewheeler account, I can more easily pick out the best stuff and RT it. Because the @timbuckteeth account is followed by a lot more accounts (almost 10,000) it is then simple to RT the @stevewheeler tweet, to amplify important messages still further over the @timbuckteeth community.
One or two have complained already that this is 'ego retweeting'. I disagree. For me it's amplification. Interestingly I hadn't actually heard of 'ego retweeting' before it was mentioned, but I would counter that this is not about ego, it's about finding interesting items and links that might be also of interest to the community and then sharing them more widely. A few have threatened to unfollow my accounts because of what they perceive as excessive retweeting between the accounts. Some may already have done so. I have responded that I don't mind if they do, because ultimately, all of the data gathered is useful, including details of whether people decide to follow or unfollow one or both accounts. If they are able to tell me why they decided to do so, that would be even better, giving me a clearer picture of the effect of multiple accounts.
Some tweeps have told me that they hadn't made the link between my blog and my @timbuckteeth account. Others admitted that they didn't realise I was behind the @timbuckteeth account. This suggests that some of what we do online could be superficial or that perhaps we don't always check the source or provenance of our information before we share it onwards. Anonymity is seemingly still a pervasive feature of our digital lives, and we don't always take account of it. The picture above is a little ironic, given that some on Twitter have said they are not sure what the difference is, and what will 'Steve' tweet that will be different to 'Tim'?
Some have commented that digital identity is not just about the names and the profile pictures you use, it's also about how you interact and the context of your interaction. Yes, of course. Yet first impressions are important. I'm therefore interested in how people represent themselves up front, and whether this attracts others to interact with them or avoid them. Do comedy names or humorous pictures attract or repel? How seriously do people take social networking tools such as Twitter? How many others have multiple accounts and how do they use them to interact, and thereby develop their digital identity and presence online?
OK, I know I'm not the first person to use multiple accounts on Twitter, but the reason I'm doing it right now is not to divide up my life into different spheres of activity like many tweeps do with their dual accounts ("my A account is for work and my B account is for fun"). No, I am going to tweet the same stuff from both accounts and see what people actually do with it. A research question investigating digital identity might be phrased as: Are people more willing to follow an account that respresents its owner transparently?
So there you have it. I'm having a lot of fun playing with identity and the experiment is set to continue for a while. The @timbuckteeth account will continue on regardless, because it has, in the words of one of my Twitter pals, become a sort of brand. For the record, I'm not sure what to do with the @stevewheeler account once the experiment is over. Should I continue it? Or does anyone want a spare account, one previous owner, going cheap?
Image source (modified)
Double or quits by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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