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Difference Between Personal and Professional Twitter Accounts

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 20, 2012
Filed under

Keith’s 8:20 am EST note: Last evening, JSC PAO’s Amiko Kauderer tweeted via @amikokauderer “Wonder about breaking bread for Thanksgiving in space? Talking to @NASA food scientist tomorrow. Got Qs? Tweet me w #askStation!” She claims that this is her personal account and replied “@NASAWatch This is my personal Twitter account. I tweet about my life & interests, which includes my work. Official tweets @NASA_Johnson”.
OK, then why is this official NASA event only being made available to the 1,936 followers of the @amikokauderer personal account but not to the 89,640 followers of the official @NASA_Johnson account? This is a rather poor decision inasmuch as the potential audience of @amikokauderer is dwarfed by that of @NASA_Johnson which commands 46 times the number of followers across a much broader range than does @amikokauderer.
As NASA upgrades its Internet presence, it needs to re-examine the use of personal employee Twitter accounts Vs official Twitter accounts to make certain that the most effective means (a combination thereof) is used to alert taxpayers as to what NASA is doing – and that taxpayers are not put in the position of trying to separate personal tweets from business tweets. Most people get separate Twitter accounts to solve this problem.
Keith’s 11:30 am EST update: @NASA_Johnson just tweeted mention of this official event (at the last minute) some 12 hours after it first appeared – exclusively – on @amikokauderer – a personal Twitter account. As such only Amiko Kauderer’s pals and followers knew about this event well in advance – as opposed to the 89,640 followers of @NASA_Johnson . I am not sure what sort of social media game plan she’s following – this approach makes no sense whatsoever.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

10 responses to “Difference Between Personal and Professional Twitter Accounts”

  1. Lord Jim says:
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    When did this site become Amiko Watch?

  2. Richard H. Shores says:
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    Would it have been a good idea to contact Johnson PAO to get the official stance on this?

  3. hikingmike says:
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    That is her personal Twitter account as she said.

    “Most people get separate Twitter accounts to solve this problem.”
    And she referred to @nasa_johnson  for official tweets. If she promoted work stuff in her personal tweets, good for her I guess. Maybe she should work on putting more of that stuff on the official account also. Was Twitter really the only place this was posted?

    Here’s a problem I came across recently. Facebook prohibits making a separate account. Facebook “Pages” are run by an administrating Facebook account. By definition, it has to be a personal account, unless maybe the person doesn’t actually have a personal Facebook account. Though all accounts are supposed to be personal anyway. WTF do you do then? At least in that scenario, when on a Facebook Page, the author posts as the Page’s subject and not as themselves.

    The line between personal life and professional life keeps blurring it seems.