Controlling One's Online Persona

I mentioned at the end of the Friday Five (on Saturday) that I have a Twitter account. This led to a couple of people requesting to follow me on Twitter, and a realization of what Twitter is - it's a hybrid messaging/blogging/board service. I can't really explain it, but I get it.

As such, I dove in headfirst yesterday requesting to "follow" numerous users, which means I want to see what they post on Twitter. A handful of them requested to follow me, meaning they wanted to see what I post on Twitter. After all, that's really what it's all about - you see what they post, and they see what you post. And that's where the problem arose.

I requested to follow a few Twitter-ers who would be on the professional as opposed to the personal side of my life. And a couple of the Twitter-ers from the professional requested to follow me. Meaning they would see what I post.

No don't get me wrong - I don't post anything that's offensive, just not always very PC. I work very hard to maintain a separate persona when it comes to my professional life; it starts by using my full name in any communications with a client or would-be client and goes from there. You'll notice that outside of mentioning the city I essentially never mention here what class it is I taught unless it's something very cool like working a convention.

I just need someplace where I can just be me and not have to worry about censoring myself. Facebook, for instance, is a strictly personal thing for me. While I do have friends on Facebook who I've met in my professional life, they are people who know "the real me", are people I can trust, and thus people who I can loosen up with.

And now I have people requesting to follow me who I can't let my hair down with. Which means I need to make sure I have a clean separation between my personal and professional life online as well. As such, I need to set up a new Twitter account and ensure that separation.