Why Do YOU Protect Your Profile Updates On Twitter?
This is kind of an open poll. Increasingly I’m seeing people in my Twitter network protecting their status updates. When you protect your updates on Twitter, only people whom you authorise can read your tweets. They don’t show in Twitter search, and nobody who isn’t following (and authorised by) you can see your replies.
If your profile was previously open and you now decide to protect it, everything you now publish to Twitter goes private, and Google will stop indexing your updates (although your old tweets will remain on both). If you unprotect, while your new tweets will again be visible to all, everything you wrote while protected stays hidden.
Lots of people have a ‘real-life’ history. Maybe you’ve had problems with somebody on Twitter, or people in other social networks or bulletin boards. Maybe there’s somebody offline who you don’t want to be able to access your Twitter stream, like a boss, ex-partner or good old-fashioned weirdo. All of these are legitimate reasons to make your account private.
At least, theoretically. You see, when you protect your updates on Twitter, you’re going to limit your experience on the network. You’re making yourself less a part of the community. This is an inevitability. People can’t read your timeline, so they can’t get an idea of who you are or what you tweet about, so they’re less likely to want to follow you. For me personally, if somebody follows me and I visit their profile and it says it’s protected, I rarely click on the follow button. And if I happen to stumble across a protected profile, I never click on the follow button. Why would I? I have no idea what to expect. There could be any manner of lunatic hiding under there.
I’ll go into more detail about the implications of choosing a private account on Twitter in a follow-up post, but I want to hear from you guys, first.
Those of you who protect your accounts, please share your reasons with us below. You don’t have to be too specific – I certainly don’t want you in any way to ‘out’ yourself – so just a general reason will do. But please be as honest as possible.
I’d also like to hear from anybody who previously experimented with a protected account but decided it wasn’t for them for whatever reason(s).
And if you’re considering protecting your account, but are currently public, feel free to share your thoughts, too. As said, I’ll put everything together for a follow-up post, and we can have a closer look at the pros and cons of a protected Twitter profile.
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as you well know my account is protected, partly for real-life reasons (work, family) and to avoid getting spam followers. but mainly because i simply want my updates protected and seen by only those i have allowed to see them. you’re absolutely right about the limitations though, especially not being able to reply to tweets by authors not following you back.
.-= fudgeit´s last blog ..catch the pigeon =-.
I fluctuate between protected and unprotected.
My first reason is due to worries that my boss will check my updates. Whilst it is not a problem that I tweet while at work it could cause issues at some point in the future.
Mainly though, my friends & followers are mostly protected in order that they don’t get spam/britney bots following them. I know that this shouldn’t really be a problem, but it’s important to them to have a ‘clean’ profile.
I’ve spoken with others on MANY occasions about how great it would be if Twitter separated the functions of update protection and follower approval. In an ideal system, I would wish to have my updates public (with perhaps an API/Client option to make a particular update protected, as I know that the protection is attributed to individual tweets currently) and yet still require users to request to follow me. Many people I know think this would be perfect for them too, and I’ve been meaning to put something in writing for a while.
Hope all that makes sense!
David.
It might be useful to have a checkbox to ‘make this tweet private’ (or public) that could be used on an as necessary basis.
Of course, it Twitter allowed us to edit or at least properly delete tweets a lot of these privacy concerns would be less of an issue.
I think follower approval might be something we see in the future. That way, others can still check out your timeline to see if you’re worth a follow, but you have the final say.
Yes, a checkbox to switch protection on an individual tweet (with accompanying API option for clients) would be great. Not sure about editing tweets though – that may be a step too far for me. I personally don’t have any issues with the current deletion system either. Follower approval, identical to the process for protected accounts, would be my Twitter Holy Grail. Would be very easy to implement too as the method already exists!
You don’t have any issues with not being able to delete tweets? Really?
As I’ve proposed elsewhere within this blog I think thirty seconds to be able to edit a published tweet would be very useful indeed. We all make mistakes. After that, you couldn’t edit the tweet, but we should always be able to delete. And by that I mean properly delete, not as it is now.
Course, the delete option to a private account as it stands is pretty effective. The tweet is already excluded from search.twitter due to teh privacy setting deleting it from your stream means it’s gone(unless it’s @reply to someone using a client I guess – ok I concur, the limitations are also evident in private streams)
;oD
btk
.-= billythekid´s last blog ..Musical Beeps =-.
I protect my updates because I discovered my stepmum used twitter to stay closely updated about my life and questioned me afterwards about everything I wrote. Sure, I can choose to don’t post anything personal anymore but Twitter is all about sharing in my opinion, so I also want to rant on Twitter or tell something about what’s happening in my life. And I don’t want people like my stepmum read that through Twitter.
Besides that, I protected my updates when I started my internship. I wanted to have a safe place to rant whenever I felt like to and I know it’s common that companies check things like Twitter and Facebook.
I always thought I would reopen my updates as soon as I finished my internship but I actually like the fact that I know who reads my updates. I have plenty of not-protected social network tools like Facebook and my own weblog, I feel comfortable with Twitter being protected
Though, it would be a neat idea if you could choose per tweet if it should be protected or not. Than the privacy issue has been solved and I would unprotect my updates immediately because it’s true that people tend to follow you faster when your tweets are unprotected.
My tweets are not protected. I feel that’s the real sense behind why twitter is created, it is to share what you’re doing. I also like tweeting even if I have zero followers, but I have plenty and they are real people.
Recently though, I limited my tweets to ‘what am I really just really doing.’ I used to tweet everything but I now realized it isn’t safe. But I still wouldn’t protect my tweets right now. Yeah, it’s a turn off when people protect their tweets, I don’t follow them either. But my close friend, a twitter user, protect his tweets so he’s aware of people who follows him, that’s what he told me.
Why protect my tweets? Well, yeah, I do have a weirdo on my tail and I’ve been trying to duck her for weeks. This has calmed that storm.
But I’m finding too that I like qualifying my followers. I am not interested in life trainers from Malibu and marketing specialists from Leeds. I will NEVER engage with them and frankly I don’t care if they never see my tweets.
The reality is that I don’t really want more followers. If anything I’d like fewer. Yes, I understand I may be pre-empting some wonderfully interesting people who, were they to follow me, might prove to be great friends. It’s a trade-off. I’m happy with the net result.
When someone starts following me and they don’t display their tweets I simply BLOCK & Report SPAM.
If you’re going to follow me, then you should be displaying your tweets.
1.
The only reason that people protect their tweets, in my opinion, is that they don’t fully understand how powerful and beneficial a loyal twitter following can be. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much influence you have. Even if you aren’t a business owner or “marketer” you may at some point need help finding a new job, restaurant recommendation, or an opinion (this is often called crowd-sourcing). Having a strong network can do more for you than you know and Twitter is one of the best way to build it.
Plus, if someone has protected their tweets, they’re telling the world they have something to hide, whether they do or not.
2.
I think the more restrictions you put on Twitter the more you take away from the original idea. Twitter is great because it allows people to share their lives with each other in a new way. This doesn’t mean you have to share EVERY part of your life, every grumble, bitter thought, and so forth. Be positive. Be interesting. Be helpful.
If you’re worried about your boss seeing your tweets, you shouldn’t be writing that tweet in the first place. If your boss is gone on a business trip does that give you the liberty to gossip in the lunchroom? Maybe. But is it a good idea? Could your boss find out from other people? Don’t risk it. Actually, don’t be that kind of person in the first place. Problem solved.
3.
If there are “internet marketers” and spambots following you, don’t worry about it. They aren’t even reading your tweets and your brand is not in jeopardy. Who YOU follow is what’s really important.
Bottom Line:
Don’t protect your tweets, but be careful what you say. Protecting your reputation and name is just as important online as it is off.
ok so i my problem with having my tweets set to public which, i now go private is that i don’t want my tweets to appear all over google, uni’s are increasingly looking into prospective students social networking antics and 3 of my older friends didnt get into university last year because of what was posted on twitter and found on google. it irritates me that there isn’t a happy medium so that anyone i follow can see my tweets rather than just those that follow me, and in general i feel that they should be kept of google search results, its fair enough for it to tell people that you have an account but i don’t want stuff published all over the place without my say so! its a difficult decision but i chose to go private for those reasons. i apologise for appalling punctuation and grammar by the way, my standard English appears to have deserted me since coming down with a bug haha!!
Personally, I protect my tweets b/c I don't necessarily want the same snoops I have on fb reading what I tweet, but I would LOVE it if there was some way to have an exception to the rule if you are addressing someone. For example if I'm trying to say @danabobana – hey how's it going ; and she isn't yet following me so she never see's that, that's a little stupid. I think posts that pertain to a person or are addressing them should be visable to the person they address… No?
I agree with you crystal. I have nosy nosy in-laws who constantly all over everything I say. I should have went with my first gut instinct which said not to add them when they kept asking. I’m just going to start a new twitter account and hopefiully everyone that I want will just follow me on that one. If I block them then I”m hiding something. The truth is I run a blog and I have people that follow me strictly for those posts, so when I’m tweeting business I don’t need sarcastic responses.