Private Twitter Accounts – What’s the Point?

January 26, 2010

Private sign, London

Image Credit: Олександр

You wouldn’t go to a party with duct tape on your mouth, so why would you make your Twitter account private?

Twitter is a social media network. Granted, social can mean a private social club, but that isn’t what Twitter is all about. Twitter is about connecting with the world, whether that’s people in your local neighborhood, or people across the planet.

It’s about being approachable, not snobbish

That’s right, I said snobbish. I think people that have private Twitter accounts are snobs. They think that the conversations they have with their “friends” on Twitter are too exclusive to share with the world.

If you’re on Twitter, you’re theoretically there to take part in the community Twitter has created. The concept of sharing information, resources, and bits of life is the foundation of Twitter’s success. If everyone suddenly decided to make their accounts private, the success of Twitter would come to a screeching halt.

For work groups, private accounts do make sense

Okay, so there is one good reason I can come up with for people to have a private Twitter account – if they are using Twitter to communicate within a work group. If your private account falls into this category, then apologies for calling you a snob.

If your organization is using Twitter in a work group, I would actually be intrigued to see what impact it is having on productivity. Is it helping with productivity, or is it hurting? Do your employees like using it, or do they simply revert back to traditional “get up and go talk to the person” actions?

What do you think?

Do you use Twitter with a private account? If so, tell me why, maybe I’m completely off-base with this snob-thing. Do you agree with me? Do you think people with private Twitter accounts come off as snobbish? Let me know in the comments below.

  • http://twitter.com/saraschneider Sara Schneider

    I just tweeted about this yesterday. Someone I didn't know, which a protected account, started following me. I couldn't figure out anything about her, or any reason to request permission to follow her back. What's the point? If you want to be private and keep in your own private network, fine, but why be private and still follow other people? I blocked her (and it felt good – is that bad?)

  • http://www.michaelcarwile.com/ Michael Carwile

    Your comment made me laugh – I've done that more times than I can remember. I block people all the time, so I don't think it's bad. If it's obvious someone doesn't really want to connect with me and/or they are simply trying to promote some spamming product, I have no issue with blocking them. As far as I know, I haven't blocked anyone that I shouldn't have, hmm…

  • Tinyvox

    My goodness.

    Would Edison put his mental processes on Twitter ?

    Private notes to yourself are infinitely more valuable than ramblings to impress other users.

    It is astonishing to me that people don’t see the value of keeping track of your day as you experience it. Privacy means you can be totally free to keep this log. This freedom means you’ll use it 100x more !!!!

    • http://www.michaelcarwile.com/ Michael Carwile

      Fair point. I think there are much better journaling tools available than Twitter provides via a private account, though. To each their own, but I personally wouldn’t use Twitter as a personal journal.

    • Osornowork

      Does anyone here know the statistics? how many people in twitter is going private?

  • Pingback: No. 152, 115, 336 « Thoughts in Random Access

  • justsaying

    my immediate family (local and overseas) have our own little private twitter network.
    twitter allows the ones overseas to communicate with us over sms without the need for expensive data plans.
    i once had a public account but got sick of all the “noise”.
    accounts outside the ones really near and dear to me are now just in lists and i will check them only when i want to.
    snob? maybe, but this is how i use it.

    • http://www.carwilemarketing.com/ Michael Carwile

      Hey, thanks for your thoughts.

      I understand the first part of your comment – using Twitter for a private group with people all over the globe certainly makes sense and even having the accounts be private makes sense.What I don’t understand is your comment about all the “noise”. Since you aren’t *required* to follow anyone on Twitter, the only noise you should ever deal with is from the people that you have intentionally followed. In terms of inbound noise, people pinging you with the @ username protocol, having a private account won’t solve this issue. Similarly, if you aren’t following someone, they are not able to send you a DM, either, so no issue there… Maybe you can elaborate what you mean by “noise”?I get your point about the private group, which is similar to my comment about work groups, but I don’t understand your other thoughts.

  • Jane

    Yes, you’re completely off-base. I was harassed by DM by someone. I don’t like being harassed. Ergo, my account is private. I don’t want that person seeing anything I say or reading anything about me, but I enjoy interacting with my followers. If you have a problem with that, that’s really more your problem than it is mine – you are the one who is missing out on content you might be able to see if you simply sent a follow request. I think it’s ridiculous to assume people are just snobby. I can think of a LOT of different reasons why people might choose to make their accounts private.

    • http://www.carwilemarketing.com/ Michael Carwile

      Though I completely understand and agree with the annoyance of being harassed, it is not possible for someone to do so via DM unless you are following them (something you must intentionally do).

      That said, I DO understand your point about not wanting to reveal information/comments to that particular person, but Twitter just isn’t the right place for that. Facebook has that kind of “privacy” built in. Twitter’s built on the idea of 1-way (but hoping for 2-way) communication. I can follow you without you following me or vice versa.

      Perhaps “snob” is a bit harsh, I’ll grant that, but I still believe people that use private Twitter accounts aren’t really getting the point. There are other (better) services that have that kind of feature-set built-in; that is their foundation, even. That’s the point I’m trying to get across with this post.

      All the same, thanks for your thoughts. You’ve softened me on my stance (if only slightly).

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