A fresh start: the story of why I deleted all my tweets

November 17th, 2009 • 2 comments Moi Numérique, Moi-Je par soi-même
Tags: EDID09, identity, Identity management, impression

This is another contribution to the digital identities case stories repository, in the Pattern Language Network. Case Stories describe critical incidents of practice, highlighting key design challenges and possible solutions, They can be found at: http://purl.org/planet/Cases/

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

Recently I have applied for selected job positions within international organisations in Europe. As soon as I had finished preparing and submitting my CV, I started to assess my online presence in case a potential employer ‘Googled’ me. I did not have any issues with my blog or my Netvibes universe: although they can always be improved, for example, making easier the access to relevant and structured information, they are in fact always prepared for public scrutiny! However I had a nagging thought in the back of my mind about my Twitter account.

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

Although I was reluctant to use Twitter, I fell into it in 2007. At the beginning I used it only for personal purposes, but I soon began to tweet about my professional activities as well, mixing personal and professional tweets as my life went on. I was wary of privacy issues and always paid attention to what I tweeted. However, I did not want to build a fake public persona by carefully selecting tweets and retweets according to the editorial line ‘what am I doing now that makes me look great’? (replace ‘great’ by any other self-aggrandisement adjective).

So I have happily tweeted as a professional, but also as a mother and a citizen about all sorts of things that fill my everyday life – when life was clement enough to leave me the time to do so.

A few weeks ago some events made me reconsider my twitter activities:

• a blog post on the Internet titled “Is twitter my new CV?”

• the proliferation of fake public personas within the EdTech panorama who are effectively using their Twitter accounts as an eReputation trampoline

I realised that my Twitter account is definitely not my online CV in action and I did not want it to be. I am not building myself as a professional using Twitter. And I don’t want people to build my online professional profile based on my Twitter stream.

With this idea in mind I reassessed my Twitter stream and found a portrait of myself that wasn’t uplifting for my professional self: a mother busy living a challenging life.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

I didn’t want to delete my Twitter account, I just needed a fresh start. As a consequence I decided to delete just the Twitter stream and decide later whether I was interested in continuing to twitter or not. I deleted all tweets using TwitWipe, a tool that deletes all your tweets in one go: http://twitwipe.aalaap.com/login.php. When my Twitter stream was deleted I tweeted an explanatory message announcing that all 573 tweets had been wiped.

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

Deleting all my tweets feels like a success. I instantly felt weightless, without worries about the kind of professional profile that people can build by backward screening my Twitter account. However, given that the number of tweets in a profile are an identity marker, I would have loved to keep this indicator. I don’t want people to think that I’ve just discovered Twitter!

Since I deleted all my tweets I also feel less pressure to use Twitter. I have only one tweet explaining that I have erased everything else, I don’t have to twit anymore as well. I can escape from the banal world of ‘Hello Twitterverse!’ I do not even open my iPhone Twitter app. My life has changed: I have more time to concentrate in important things and be productive. I can always blog!

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

I gained a better appraisal and management of the so-called spontaneous and ephemeral online activities.