Locked.

My Twitter account is now locked.  I did not make this decision carelessly or without forethought.  Some readers will be surprised, others understanding, a few will tweet passive aggressive messages that condemn but don’ t mention me by name, and most people won’t care.

So why did I make my account private?

Back in the summer of 2008 when I signed up for Twitter, there weren’t many people I knew using the service, and the only way to really build a Twitter community was with a public account.  When I organized the AsburyPop event, I created an additional account to spread the word and build the brand, a goal that’s success depended upon an account being public.  At the time, I engaged online only on Twitter and didn’t open a Facebook account until late 2009, a fairly typical timeline for someone my age.  Eventually, I discovered LinkedIn and over time found it to be a very useful, engaging, and professional social media option.

During the past 3 years, my Twitter communities grew along with Twitter itself.  I now have over 2000 followers and at the start of the summer, followed slighly less than 2000 accounts.  I still maintained the AsburyPop account, renamed to VoxPopNJ (my company name), but rarely posted there.  My social media experience was too fragmented, and I lacked a clear “path forward” for my online activities, a concept a former boss and mentor from my younger days always said was critical to the success of any project. At the beginning of July, I consolidated my wordpress.com blog with my lauragesin.net and voxpopnj.com websites to create the site you see here, and about 2 weeks ago, I shut down the VoxPopNJ account.

As I cleared away the clutter surrounding my social media network, I took the next step and began vetting who I followed on Twitter.  No, I didn’t use those bulk unfollow services, I attempted to go through each and every account I followed to evaluate whether that account provided value for me and to my community.  I unfollowed over 200 accounts before abandoning that time consuming task.  My real community lies in my 2 Twitter lists, Top-Twitterers (307 accounts) and Fantastic Fiber Folks (24 accounts – I knit & recently started sewing again, and these twitterers share those passions). Those 331 accounts represent real, genuine people, most of whom I converse with on a daily basis.

Anyone reading my Twitter stream without reading the tweets of my community get one side of the conversation and comments out of context. If you aren’t friend or family – online or in real life – most of my posts make little sense.  I tweet fewer informative links than I used to, and probably chat directly with far fewer than 311 accounts.  Some members of my community are leaders in their field and wouldn’t recognize my avatar, but when one of them, oh say @JohnBirmingham, does respond directly to me, I’m thrilled.  (I won’t tell you what I did when @CoryBooker DM’d me.)

It’s important to note that those 331 accounts are not current students although many are teachers and educators.  I used to believe that the transparency of Twitter made me a better teacher, and to some extent, I still believe this.  When my students see me as more than a teacher, as a mother, a programmer, a designer, a daughter (I brought my parents to speak to a class 2 years ago), a friend (not to them but to people like @mswas and @NJFilm2011), a reader, a news junkie (cue pretentious NPR music), a traveler, a citizen, and yes, an adult who sometimes drops an f-bomb or two, they are more receptive to what I try to teach them and more understanding of my imperfections.

Until this past year, my students had little interest in Twitter.  Now, they tweet entire class experiences, are interested in what I and other teachers tweet, and use that as an easy means to ask quick questions.  I follow few students – those handful I do follow tend to be hard core coders or incredibly talented designers, and we discuss obscure programs and our obsession with fonts (and knitting) – and now won’t follow any until they graduate. Last week, a student mentioned me on Twitter asking if he could get into one of my classes at the last minute.  I don’t follow him, he doesn’t follow me, but Twitter was the quickest way for him to get his answer, and I wanted that to continue, a large part of why I haven’t “gone private” in the past.

Unfortunately, that will stop today.

Why? I don’t want an issue to arise regarding with I tweet because I earn my living primarily by teaching high school juniors and seniors.  We’ve all read the articles about teachers in trouble for online antics.  I didn’t see “paragon of virtue” in my employment contract, and I’m a huge fan of free speech.  I wonder how teachers that protested the Vietnam war or spoke out about racism before and during the Civil Rights movement were treated? Not that I tweet anything so lofty, but free speech is free speech, and I think students gain from knowing their teachers are people too. However, with students, parents, fellow teachers, and employers now active on social media – it worries me when my employer wants to be my friend on Facebook –  I have to find a compromise between what I believe is right and what’s expected of me.

The social media landscape went from the promise of the vast frontier to the confines of suburbia, and I’m moving to the gated community.

In my search for a new home online, I explored a number of possibilities.  Earlier this summer, I wrote a post about Ravelry, another social media network I’ve come to love.  I have few Ravelry friends, am a member of a number of groups, and post less than once a week, but I’ve come to love it as much as all the other social media platforms on which I engage.  Why? Because I can find what appears to be limitless information and instruction about the crafts I love, I can keep track of my projects, patterns I’d like to make, discover the experiences of other knitters, and follow my favorite podcasters’ adventures in fiber, literature, and their lives here and abroad.

It was that type of experience that drew me to Twitter, the small community of people with shared interests and experiences who aren’t intrusive, judgemental or spammy.  I’ve lost that aspect of Twitter, and I hope to get it back by taking control of my account. I’ve found it to some extent on Google+ (more about that in a future post).  In a moment of panic, I thought going private meant losing access to an online outlet that’s completely public.  Then I remembered! What is my blog other than an public platform for the expression of my interests, opinions and experiences?

All relationships require work, and it’s time I gave Twitter some much needed attention.  The first step? Locking my account and actively managing my community.  The second? Making this blog the focal point of my online expression.