Learning the World

I’ve been using Twitter for years, and almost since I created my first account I’ve debated the need for splitting it in two: once for my work related tweets, and one for everything else.

It’s was a difficult question, because you can’t easily divide my life into “work” and “non-work” related tweets. The apps I work with every day — Drupal, WordPress MU, iTune, etc. — also happen to power the stuff I use at home.

This is because my friends, both online and off, then to be intensely creative and productive people. They’re podcasters and writers, gamers and hobbyists, and they use all the self-same tools as at my day job. Cross-pollination between the two has been essential to my use of Twitter, and for that reason I’ve been hesitant to spin off a separate account.

And yet … when I go to conferences for work, I find a lot of people using some iteration of their real-world name for twitter … where as I use my gamer handle, @nukehavoc. Now that handle’s fine when I’m at Origins, GenCon, Balticon or some other big geek convention … but it feels a little less professional when I’m at a work conference.

There’s also the fact that while I’m sure some folks enjoy keeping up with my geekier side, I think there’s also some that would rather not have to read through my Star Wars tweets to get to my WordPress MU ones.

So to that end, I’ve created a new account on Twitter for my work and webapp related posts: @knewquist. I still have my @nukehavoc account, but that one’s full-on geeky — it has all my posts about web development, geek parenting, gaming, etc. You can expect some cross-posting between the two, especially when it comes to web development and online technologies, because as I said earlier, the cross-pollination between my different audiences is what makes Twitter work for me.

I’ll freely admit this is an experiment, and I don’t know how well it work out. I’m going to maintain the account for six months; if at the end of that time it proves to be more trouble than it’s worth, I’ll disable it.