Changing your real or user name

May 23rd, 2009 Posted by Missie at 6:05 pm

What’s the difference?

Your user name is your twitter screen name and it is how people will come to know who you are and give you a personal identity on Twitter. Your user name appears in your profile and URL and is unique to you. User names are used for login, @replies, direct messaging, and more. Your user name appears alongside your profile image in friends’ timelines each time you update, and we also include it in all outgoing text messages.

Your user name can contain up to 15 characters. Twitter restricts the length of your user name so it can be sent easily with SMS messages.

Your real name is your full name (if you have chosen to use it), displayed in the sidebar of your profile page and used to identify you to friends. This can be helpful if your user name is something mysterious, such as @cheeky_chicken, but you can also use a mysterious name in your real name field if you wish to keep your true identity a secret.

Your real name can be 20 characters long. Although user names can contain up to 15 characters, many real names exceed 15 characters. Real names are also used in follow notification and request emails to help accurately identify folks with user names like cupcake25.

Changing your both your user and real names on twitter is simple. Just;

1. In the upper right hand navigation bar, click Settings
2. Change the name in the real name or user name field
3. Save your changes

Changing your user name will not affect your existing followers, direct messages, or @replies. They will simply see a new user name next to your picture when you update. It is advisable to send out an update to your followers before you change your user name, because any replies or messages sent to your old user name will not be associated with your account once you’ve changed to your new user name.