Monday, June 30, 2008

creative Twitter bios (Part 1)



A few years ago, in 2005, I did a post called Blog Taglines Experiment, which got the attention of BusinessWeek. It was a study of the slogans that bloggers wrote, generally located directly under or to the side of their blog title.

Now let's examine some interesting, funny, and brilliant Twitter bios -- that micro-content that Twitter users put in their sidebar as a brief description of who they think they are.

NOTE: Some have embedded URLs of their website or blog in their bios. Others use a blog tagline that has become legendary, and in good branding, do not change it. Then there are A Listers or industry giants who use the most silly thing they can think of, which I interpret as being humble and funny.

I think you'll love the sheer genius and goofiness, or modest professional brevity, of the Twitter community.





(1) monstro (Lane Becker) -- The person who inspired this study!
http://twitter.com/monstro

i disagree with everything you just said.





(2) Michael Arrington
http://twitter.com/techcrunch

Making the World a More Ajaxy Place





(3) Eve11 (Evelyn Rodriguez)
http://twitter.com/eve11


numinous poet myth maker fairytale fan dreamweaver art addict storydweller imaginatrix skipping to global Renaissance & golden age





(4) Chris Webb
http://twitter.com/chriswebb

Associate Publisher, John Wiley & Sons EMEA (UK) - Banging my head against a wall of old media





(5) NewMediaJim (Jim Long)
http://twitter.com/newmediajim


new media soul trapped in an old media body





(6) Scobleizer (Robert Scoble)
http://twitter.com/scobleizer

Tech geek blogger @ http://scobleizer.com





(7) Jeffrey Zeldman
http://twitter.com/zeldman

invented fire





(8) Gaping Void (Hugh McLeod)
http://twitter.com/gapingvoid

"cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"






(9) SpaceyG (Grayson)
http://twitter.com/spaceyg

Born to blog




(10) Creative Sage (Cathryn Hrudika)
http://twitter.com/CreativeSage

Creative Sage™ lives a passionate personal mission to cause the spontaneous combustion of creativity, innovation, and compassionate intelligence everywhere.





(11) Jeremiah Owyang
http://twitter.com/jowyang

Currently employed as Senior Analyst, Social Computing, Forrester Research | How I use Twitter http://tinyurl.com/24lv65





(12) Richard at DELL
http://twitter.com/RichardatDELL

member of Dell's digital media team





(13) Paul Walsh
http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

The Irish Opportunist - Chair, British Interactive Media Association. Founder/CEO, Segala. Founder/CEO, wubud. Partner, Jaipur Restaurants.





(14) Chris Heur
http://twitter.com/chrisheuer

Social Media Club Founder, Market Conversations, New Marketing, Speaker, Social Media






(15) Charlene Li
http://twitter.com/charleneli

Forrester analyst





(16) Ariel Waldman

http://twitter.com/arielwaldman

http://arielwaldman.com/about





(17) Ev (Evan Williams)
http://twitter.com/ev

Co-founder and CPO of Twitter






(18) Queen of Spain (
Erin Kotecki Vest)
http://twitter.com/QueenofSpain

Queenofspainblog, BlogHer, HuffPo, MOMocrats






(19) jiconoclast (Patrick Thornton)
http://twitter.com/jiconoclast


Journalist. Web developer. Blogger. Technology evangelist. Community builder. Knowledge seeker.






(20) abiteofsanity (Bryce Moore)
http://twitter.com/abiteofsanity


I'm a realistic idealist too often thinking in song lyrics while handling attack-trained OS X icons.






(21) jdasilva
http://twitter.com/jdasilva

Aspiring political journalist in a love affair with the internet.






(22) Chris Brogan
http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan


Social media type, but love the emerging enterprise tech space, too.







(23) DaveWiner
http://twitter.com/davewiner

media hacker






(24) dweinberger (David Weinberger)
http://twitter.com/dweinberger

I am fewer than 160 characters







(25) MrUgly
http://twitter.com/MrUgly

College student, writer, dreamer







(26) PaulCarr
http://twitter.com/paulcarr


I'm a writer. With all the baggage that entails.




(27) jspepper (Jeremy Pepper)
http://twitter.com/jspepper

Taking your lunch. Eating your cookies. PR Generalist.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Until the launch of Twellow and my need to embrace TSO (twitter search optimization) I liked my old bio better

"there is no box, the mind is the only limitation"

but wanting to make sure people find me, had to go the keyword route...

BTW - I agree, I like Lane's approach too

Jack said...

Suddenly am feeling very uncreative in my bio

steven edward streight said...

@Queen of Spain - I just wish I actually could improve my Twitter settings, like my bio, but I can't. Twitter needs to fix problems, instead of ignoring users.

I get a stupid error message about "email must not already be in use" when I try to change anything in my settings. I've posted the problem, and others, on Get Satisfaction and I've contacted actual Twitter developers on Twitter: no luck.