1 min read

What a Twitter bio can look like

I looked at five personal Twitter bios. This is what I notice about what's in them, what they're doing, and what they're not doing.

The bios:

  1. David Chapman
  2. Charlie Awbery
  3. Visakan Veerasamy
  4. Michael Taft
  5. Malcolm Ocean

I see a few approaches/ideas here. In no particular order:

  1. "What am I interested in? What do I think and write about?" e.g. Chapman.
  2. Closely related: "What is my vibe?" e.g. Visa, Malcolm, a little bit in Michael's.
  3. "What do I do? What kinds of stuff do I make/participate in? What am I involved in? What are my projects?" e.g. Charlie, Visa, Michael, Malcolm. Can be very broad ("podcaster"), very specific ("X book which you can buy here"), or in-between — abstract yet unusually phrased and specific ("Feral free agent").
  4. Emoji for vibes. Alleviates otherwise broad labels in e.g. Michael's profile.

After that I also looked at Michael Nielsen's and Andy Matuschak's — they follow a mix of the above patterns.

There seem to be two camps as far as personal labels go: Zero or many. Charlie's, Malcolm's and Michael's profiles each use plural labels. Chapman's does not label himself, the bio focuses on his interests. Visa's — same thing. All the labels I remember are about doing. They give one of the many possible answers to: What does this person do?

Not one bio covers the full range of that person's expression. Not even one. They don't even come close. That's to be expected in retrospect — and it makes the job of writing a bio seem much simpler.