Mark’s Cheeky Posterous

A Tale of Two Twitters: Why I Started Rocking Multiple Accounts

Most people who use Twitter have just one personal account. And that’s fine. But over the almost two years I’ve used Twitter, I have seen some creative uses of more than one personal account. For example, Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post tweets at The Fix and speaks authentically as himself. But when there’s a press conference or something like the State of the Union address, he rapidly live-tweets everything at a second, supplementary account: The Hyper Fix.  No less authentic, just a different way of conveying a different kind of information.

Another example is former Apple evangelist and now founder of AllTop.com, Guy Kawasaki.  His personal account is a bit impersonal, by design – it’s an information fire hose that points to whatever he thinks is interesting (and often routed through one of his own sites). But what if he wants to reply to someone’s question – he can’t disrupt the information hose, right? No problem. He has a second account, named Guy’s Replies, where he writes back to people.  Another cool social hack, in my opinion.

Some of you may have seen my blog post announcing that I’ve joined Microsoft as Director of Innovative Social Engagement for their U.S. Public Sector division in Washington, D.C.  As part of that effort, I’m reading more than I previously had been about Microsoft business and products and services, and also those of companies like Google, IBM, Apple, Cisco, Adobe, and so forth. Often my philosophy has been to take the best of what I’m reading and thinking about and tweet it on my personal account, but I’ve come to think that overwhelming my personal stream with tons of Microsoft links would start to become inauthentic to some degree – or just annoying to the people who have come to like the diversity of my postings.

Thus, I've started a new Twitter account named “Microsoft Mark.” If you’re interested in science, technology, innovation, communications, the future, and particularly news, opinion, and events in the information technology and Web space, I encourage you to follow my new account. It will be a high-quality fire hose of the best information I find (and to some degree, produce myself) for the communities I’m a part of and care about. It will not be a company marketing stream with Microsoft-only information (those already exist), and it will not be impersonal. It will merely be specialized.

And I’ll continue tweeting as Cheeky Geeky. That account won’t change at all, save for the fact that my life in 2010 will be a bit different than it was in 2009. But that’s just an authentic change that I hope you and I both enjoy. I think that Chris and Guy are good examples of social hacks whose tactics can make both your professional and personal lives work just a little better. As I wrote in my original post,  I want to use my position with Microsoft as not just a job, but as a thought leadership platform where I can continue to personally innovate and contribute ideas and tactics to the larger community. I hope that the evolving way I will be using Twitter this year is part of that contribution.