Twitter, at least for those who use it heavily is changing the way we communicate online. The social networking aspect is creating new relationships, whilst the always on nature means that you often hear about big news stories first on Twitter.
TechCrunch France editor Ouriel Ohayon like a growing number of people loves Twitter, but he is (well, I thought initially) fairly unique because has more than one Twitter account. Ouriel decided to run a small poll to see if others had more than one account. Although a small sample size, he was far from alone. According to his poll, the majority of Twitter users (53%) have more than one Twitter account.
Being naturally skeptical I didn’t believe him, so I polled some people on Twitter directly. I was wrong. Around half of those people who responded said that they had more than one Twitter account, with many having three or more. There were various reasons given for the additional accounts. Some had additional accounts for their businesses, ones where they may post items exclusively business related for those who are interested. These accounts also included automated accounts as well, for example an account that pulls data from an RSS feed.
Then there were some other more interesting uses for multiple accounts. Some were using the additional account like a RSS reader, subscribing to business and other Twitter accounts that provide topical news within a particular niche or interest area. Some used an additional account for a circle of friends where they could privately discuss items they didn’t want the entire world reading (Twitter allows for private/ invitation only settings.) One Twitter user even told me he has the extra accounts because he’s name squatting.
Most mainstream Twitter clients don’t support multiple accounts so these Twitter users were accessing their additional accounts via the web page.
I’m still not completely convinced that the majority of Twitter users would have more than one account, but certainly it would appear to be a growing trend. I’m also not about to go and sign up for additional accounts quite yet either, one Twitter account is hard enough to manage as it is, although I can see some of the benefits. The RSS reader/ news style use in particular could change the way we currently manage information if eventually there’s enough people using Twitter this way, and enough data available to make it a significant force.
If you’re a Twitter user:
- 1
- 2
- 4 or more
- 3
Total Votes: 1291
Started: January 9, 2008
I have two twitter accounts, I use one for personal, and one for business (programming).
Aside from a personal one and business one, I have a few joke ones, and some for client news. I’ve also created a few automatic Twitters–Twitter is the new RSS!
I dont get it, how is Twitter changing the way we communicate online?
Is Twitter the next Hotmail?
I think that people has a lot of GMail accounts but need only a Twitter one.
@Peter
Twitter is a different way to communication.
I have three. One primary that I used all the time just for social, fun, friends stuff. Then one to broadcast server status to users, being invoked when the site is down. Finally a “listening post” that’s tuned just to pull in specific “@_____” or other keywords from all twitter users in a given location.
The cheat to have multiple accounts is to use gmail’s aliases at sign-up, then not add any devices.
Twitter isn’t just a goofy thing anyone, it’s a serious tool.
You are missing out on the most important reason for at least a second twitter account - language.
It is just not feasable to have just one and post mixed language because it will put of people not speaking that language.
Yet few people feel confident enough to post everything in englisch or just do not want to look up even the simplest words. Easy example - my english is quite good but i did not post yesterday that i burned my breadrolls because i did not knew the word for zwieback.
Second to language: Circle of topic, in combination with language also regional stuff. I can be an active twitter user in english, yet nothing I say will make sense to you if I only post replies and topics to my German friends.
So to not “loose” you over stuff you and many others are not interested in (predictable), one does more than just one account.
I currently run a test to be english only, also for my German twitter buddies and fall into another problem: With twitterfriends from all kinds of timezones, you cannot even read up to what happened last night or so, because twitter will cut you off.
(me I have I think 4 active ones, plus the one German currently inactive)
Currently I have one twitter account, but it makes sense to have another one to publish updates on my business or blog.
As the poll says so far - 66% have only one account.
Thanks Duncan for questioning yourself
i think this has some implications for twitter and maybe should bring them to think how one account could handle several functions. I think also this should bring us to consider with a second filter twitter stats when number of accounts and active users are mentionned
I have three twitter accounts and it’s possible to open all of them at the same time in Firefox, I have reviewed some extensions and finally came with cookiepie where each twitter account has their own browser tab.
Where’s the option for None.
I have the same question as DarkUFO… Two votes for “Zero.”
We share a few Twitter Accounts at the office. We set-up a TwitterMail account and just share the emailaddress and sent regular updates to our company Twitteracount. So another question/poll could be: how many people share one Twitter account?
@12 The option for zero is “4 or more.”
I have just one! I don’t see the need for multiple accounts.
i had one, but i was just talking to myself, so i stopped, after my psychiatrist got mad at me for extending into technical space what is really a problem in real space
0 x’s 2 was still zero, i found
That shows that twitters actual user base is only 2/3rd of the number of accounts.
For the moment I have 2 accounts. One personal account, and one I use on a specific topic. Twitter is not just about “what are you doing now”, it is also practical for other purposes (like already said here): status messages, feeds, … It’s also great as a micro-blog, if you do want to have a blog, but don’t really have the writing skills for it.
…add another one to the zeros
None.
I’m with 0.
Chalk another one up in the “Zero” category.
I have a single Twitter account, however I have pretty much moved over to Jaiku. I only have a few actual contacts on Twitter and I am getting my friends on Jaiku because I like it better because of the ability to easily add “Web Feeds” in a nice “pretty” way.
Twitter’s not bad but Jaiku is better in my opinion. I’m also keeping a close eye on Pownce as well which is suppose to go public (no more invites) later this month.
I have two. One for my freelance business and one for my corporate (full time) business.
Twitter and Jaiku are not bad, but Wojai is better for China users!
(albeit, coming soon.)
Had 1 for a bit. Now Zero.
We were having a conversation at work one day about twitter name squatters. We coined the term “squitters”: http://everwas.com/2007/09/squitters.html
I am with 1 on my msn account.
——–
http://www.bywifi.com — Mobile Transcoding of Videos and Web Pages for Mobile Phone and PDA
After reading about twitter on techcrunch over and over and over and OVER I finally decided to test it out. So far, I don’t see the fascination. It’s facebook with everything stripped away but the status updates. Personally, that gives me little value. I am still using it, but I am only doing that because I synced up my status updates and my tweets. I’m not hating on twitter, I just haven’t seen where this site warrants THIS MUCH hype. It’s sort of the next phase in the lifecycle: “AIM away messages (2001-2005)” > “Facebook Status (2006-present)” > “Twitter”
I guess you know you’re out of the loop when you ask…”What? people have more than one Twitter account?”
I have two. work: aidg (sometimes shared though I’m the main twitterer/tweeter) and play: cat_laine
Count me for a zero vote
Reminds me of the hotmail acquisition by microsoft. hotmail was partly valued on unique email account numbers, not unique users. The difference was larger than expected after acquisition analysis within microsoft. It seems people like to have multiple persona, are we surprised?
There should have been an option for zero.
Honestly get in the real world next time and make room for a fucking ZERO!
- then you would know, most people don’t have 1
I would chime in with a zero vote, but the question is only being asked of Twitter users. I must say though, the whole post smells a bit fanboyish.
Really, Duncan, are you a paid Twitter promoter? I think the product has no real value, and read your praise of it over and over. Hate to say it..I don’t get it.
People blogging sentences. Big Woop. You TechCrunch guys can keep force feeding us Twitter but I have yet to see the genuine value in this narcissistic service that basically promotes stalking. Why do don’t you actually take the time to promote some of the legitimately useful services that submit their sites to you? Some people have actually developed technology that is more sophisticated than sentence blogging.
I am amazed at how biased this dumb site has become.
Hi, I have 1 twitter account, I will probably sign up for a couple more though, the RSS thing is a good idea!!
I never used Twitter before, however after reading this article I checked the site out, Cool. After digging around for 5 minutes I realized I needed a second account (for work), and opened it :).
I also have two twitter accounts; one for personal use and another for website content update & real time -events- posts
zero.
I organize the Tweetups for Seattle, so I have @SeattleTweeters specifically for following people in Seattle and announcing Tweetup dates. I’m a high-volume Twitterer (about to hit 6k) so not everyone wants to follow me, but they still want to know when the next dates are.
(If any Seattle folks are reading this, feel free to follow for the announcement of the next Tweetup.)
I think it’s a myth that you can keep personal and business accounts separate on Twitter, but I do see the merit of a business-only account if you’re using it to communicate within a small group.
Another 0 vote.
Yet another vote for 0.
0
…….on the verge of creating my own site “CommonSenseCrunch”
Also 0.
BTW i can’t view the results. Is that correct?
Bad poll - zero should have been an option…. also, clicking “view results” doesn’t work unless you vote forcing users to vote even if they don’t use twitter….
I have written a web-based app called MultiTweet (http://multitweet.com) specifically to make it easy to manage multiple Twitter and Jaiku account. It is still in closed beta but if anyone wants to try it out please go and register. I usually send out invites within a few days as I am trying to get more users to be able to load test it more effectively.
Doug