Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Switching Names on Twitter

Having recently gone through a name change on Twitter, this post provides the quick and easy steps I went through for my friend @fairminder aka Jim Spencer.

The good news is that changing your name on Twitter is as easy as going in and editing the name you originally chose. For instance, I went from being "astrout" to "aaronstrout." However, I wanted to keep a 2nd account with @astrout since I've got some equity in that name (and it's posted in about 250 comments across many blogs).

So here goes:

1) Open up a second Twitter account with the new name you're going to use (for instance, I did this with "aaronstrout"). NOTE: you'll need to use a second e-mail since on Twitter you can only have one account per e-mail address.

2) Now change this address by adding a "1" or any digit after. For example, I changed mine from "aaronstrout" to "aaronstrout1"

3) Go back to your original twitter account and change your old name to the new name. For example, I changed from "astrout" to "aaronstrout."

4) Now go back to your new account and change that to your old name. For example, I changed it from "aaronstrout1" to "astrout."

Mobile post sent by astrout using Utterlireply-count Replies.

2 comments:

  1. Well isn't that just genius! Now we wait to see how long before I decide to change from fairminder to jimspencer... "Should I stay or should I go now?" The Clash

    ReplyDelete
  2. You took some extra steps, Aaron. Here's how I did it, when I went from @Bryper to @BryanPerson last year.

    1) Log into my @Bryper Twitter account. Change name to @BryanPerson.

    2) IMMEDIATELY open new Twitter account (good point about needing a second e-mail address) with the @Bryper handle (technically, that handle was "available for a minute or two). Also, add a tweet in the @Bryper account directing people my new @BryanPerson account.

    Bryan | @BryanPerson | (formerly @Bryper)

    ReplyDelete