Writer's Guide To Twitter > The Basics > What userpic should I use?
To see an index of topics, please see the Main Twitter Guide For Writers page. To go back to my blog for kidlit/YA writers and illustrators, see Inkygirl. You can find me on Twitter at @inkyelbows (focus: craft & biz of writing) and @DebbieOhi (chatty replies, Twitter chats).
PLEASE NOTE: Twitter's interface has changed since I first created this FAQ, so some of the technical details and screenshots may differ slightly. The essential info remains the same.
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Choosing A Twitter User Picture
Whether you pick a realistic photo or some other image, I advise you to change your user icon as infrequently as possible. I don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to rely heavily on userpics to help me quickly identify users, especially the users whose feeds I'm always interested in checking.
Sure, I'll get used to your new userpic eventually, but I may miss a bunch of your tweets meanwhile. It's getting esp. confusing right now because so many people are using the same type of cartoon portrait avatars.
Here's a great blog post about how Twitter avatars are part of your personal branding. An excerpt:
Scanning my Twitter stream, I can quickly pick out particular authors… until they change avatars. An occasional change is fine, my brain isn’t quite old enough that it can’t adapt. But when folks switch to a new cartoon character a few times in a week, any usefulness the avatar could have provided is gone. The result? I miss things I probably should see… when I’m following a couple hundred folks, I can’t read the text descriptions for every tweet, but I can quickly pick out icons.
Last updated on July 13, 2010 by Debbie Ridpath Ohi