Twitter bird2 I’ve been on Twitter for a long time. A really long time. Longer than my actual twitter profile would indicate. (I think I first joined in late 2006.) At one point, I had over 5,000 followers, but, well, basically twitter’s security and policing was so atrocious that, for reasons of personal safety, I quit twitter and deleted my account. I was gone for about 2 years. I came back and started fresh in 2012. I came back as “TechEvangelist1” and have been tweeting as such ever since. I regularly take twitter to task for their atrocious record of handling abusers and bots and fake accounts, not that it has ever had any measurable effect on them. 

But I’ve decided it’s time for a change. For a couple of reasons. One is that, though my account has my real name associated with it, with a non name-based handle, I can never apply for ‘verified’ status. That status becomes more and more important as twitter continues to allow trolls, bots, and rampant abusers to run amuck on the platform. The second is just … well, I guess marketing, or vanity. I’d like to have my twitter handle more closely associated with my regular name and internet persona. I can’t be @davidgs, as someone else already is, so I’m going to combine my ‘davidgs’ moniker with what I actually do: IoT. So my new twitter handle will be @davidgsIoT

Twitter name transitions are not easy. It’s easy to change your ‘handle’ actually. Just go in and change it to any available handle. BUT, when you do, all ‘conversations’ with your old handle are, effectively, lost. So any replies, etc. to @TechEvangelist1 will be lost when I switch to @davidgsIoT. I’m doing what I can to mitigate this by a) downloading my twitter archive. b) reserving a placeholder account that will take the place of @techEvangelist1 after the name change and c) posting this, and a series of tweets, announcing the change. 

What this means. Not much. Especially if you’re not on twitter, or are not following me. If you are, you may have to update your lists or filters to either make sure you see my tweets, or make sure you don’t, depending on your choices. 🙂