How to Change your Twitter URL

Twitter, launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, has now been widely considered as a juggernaut in the social networking industry. With its 140-character ‘tweets’, Twitter has provided a “real-time” surge of information throughout the platform; with celebrities, media outlets and companies using it to share tidbits, breaking news, or promotions to their dear followers. It has been part of our daily lives. As such, changing something about our Twitter account can be quite scary, or exciting. However, if you’re thinking about changing your Twitter URL, that also means changing your username. And, when I first thought of that idea, I was afraid that I’ll go to all that trouble of chasing my followers; and tell them to follow my new account since I would be resetting myself to zero. But then I found out that it was not what I thought it’s going to be. It’s also very easy to do.

How can you change your Twitter URL?

• First, do some research on any search engine (e.g. Google, Bing) for your desired new username. Why? You really don’t want to be associated with a username that may have been used by a previous owner who had posted some repugnant, disgraceful, or even libelous tweets. Make sure that username is on the clear, and without any complications whatsoever.
• After that, sign in with Twitter.
• As I’ve mentioned a while ago, to change your Twitter URL, you must change your Twitter username. Go to your account settings, found in the dropdown menu (next to the ‘gear’ icon) at the top right corner.
• On your account settings page, you’ll find the username box. There, you can easily change it with your desired new username. You will be prompted if that username is available or not.
• Click “Save changes” button at the bottom of the page.
• To fully appreciate the changes, sign out your account, and re-sign in. You will find that your Twitter URL has been changed together with your username. Changing your username will not affect your existing followers, direct messages (DMs), or @replies. Your followers will simply see a new username next to your profile photo when you update. So, all is well, right? However, there’s a catch. Any new @replies or DMs sent to your old username will not be associated with your account anymore. So, how to solve this? You should create an account with your old username!
• Sign out your account again.
• At the Twitter’s homepage, create a new account. You’re going to need a different e-mail address for this.
• Don’t forget. The username you’re going to use for this account is your old username.
• After creating the account, you should update its profile picture and background to match with your then newly-replaced account.
• Finally, tweet your followers about your username change (e.g. “follow my newly-replaced account @yournewusername”).
• It doesn’t end with that. Continue monitoring your “old” account for possible new @replies or DMs from users who haven’t heard of your recent change in username. Reply them as soon as possible.

 Choosing a Username

I think most of us have their own Twitter account. So, everybody knows that our username is unique to each of us. And when I say “unique”, it implies that there is a limited choice of ‘meaningful’ usernames to choose from, especially with over 500 million Twitter users each of which has their very own username. Well, mathematically, the (estimated) possible combinations for a Twitter username outnumbers the population of the human race, so you’ll never run out of ‘usernames’ to choose from. However, if we only consider the English alphabet, almost all of those ‘combinations’ would be meaningless jumbles like “aasdfkhigty_516”

So, the question is: why go to all that trouble? It’s not like your account will cease to exist if you’re not going to change your username.

• First, if your username’s too long, you might consider changing it to a shorter one. We’re only limited to 140 characters, so we want as much as possible to have sufficient space to retweet messages.
• Second, you should consider “username aesthetics”. If your idea of a short username is “wx_Yz”, might as well change to a more longer but ‘readable’ one. Don’t sacrifice length over quality.
• Then, if you’re using Twitter as a business profile, you should really match your product or services with your username. Don’t ever consider using usernames like “wx_Yz”.

Finally, when you have a Twitter account, it is easiest for people to find you by a URL that makes them think of you. There are times when someone sets up a Twitter account thinking he/she won’t use it that often, and therefore not put much time into thinking up a fitting username. If you find your current URL quite inappropriate, you can change it whenever you like.