Starting Over From Scratch On Twitter

I took a very drastic step yesterday on Twitter. I took my account which had over 20,000 posts (a lot of them NSFW) and a Klout score of 64 and wiped it clean to start over fresh. I didn’t have to delete anything to start over again, and the process was relatively simple once a little thought was put into it.

For a little over a year, my personal Twitter account was a no-holds-barred account where I said anything that crossed my mind. Vulgarities were the norm and I had followers that were there to “hear” what I was going to say next. After my 20,000th post I started wondering, “What if I were to delete every single tweet and start over again? Is it possible to delete every tweet you’ve ever sent out?” A Google search showed me that it apparently wasn’t as easy as it sounded. I couldn’t find any automated services that would delete every single tweet for me, and deleting over 20,000 entries by hand would be a VERY time consuming project.

I put the idea on the back burner for a while, and then the answer hit me after a lunch conversation with one of my favorite Twitter people! I decided that I could keep my vulgar persona and the 20,000+ tweets that went with it while being able to reclaim my account for professional use.

Here is a step-by-step guide to how I did this. Pay attention because a little bit of “sleight of hand” is used!

1. I created a 2nd Twitter account that we’ll call CLEAN SLATE.
2. I renamed ORIGINAL account to UNCENSORED.
3. I chanted and prayed and hoped that Twitter would allow me to attach ORIGINAL to CLEAN SLATE.
4. I attached ORIGINAL to CLEAN SLATE and guess what, IT WORKED!

So now my original account had a nice uncensored name to go with it and I could go about my daily business of stirring the social media pot, and the new and improved original account was attached to a fresh, new account that could be used for professional purposes.

Now I’m happy, you’re happy, and well, to be honest, the whole world is happy!

This post was originally published on our founder's personal blog, but it's definitely a geeky thing to do and was worth sharing with you here!