Twitter and I have been through a lot since I first joined around November, 2006. I started out with public updates, then went private around the time I got pregnant with the twins because I didn’t want to have to worry about who might be reading my tweets during that wildly stressful time.
A few months ago I started noticing some strange things that I hadn’t noticed when my account was public, but I didn’t immediately attribute the weirdness to my updates being set to private. It was irritating, though, that every time I posted something to the support forum the response was essentially “your updates are private, duh.”
So here are the differences in features (some I prefer to call bugs) between private and public updates. You tell me, does it make sense to you?
Public updates only
You can have followers without having to follow them in return
When you accept a follower on a private account you have to follow them too. If you un-follow them it removes them as a follower as well. more about reciprocal following » (and here too)You get an email when someone starts following you
With private updates you get no email, even when someone requests to follow you — which requires action on your part (to deny or accept). more about private email requests »You can favorite your own tweets
On a private account, it appears to favorite the tweet, but does not appear in your list. Support says this is not a bug. more about marking your own tweets as favorites »
Other issues between public and private accounts
Beware in changing your account from public to private. There are lots of weird issues that can come up in regards to the above, as evidenced by this poor guy. You’ll likely lose most people who follow you if you’re not following them as well.
Also be aware that when you switch from private to public, you’ll lose all follower requests (they aren’t automatically added), so they’ll have to A) notice that they’re still not following you, and then B) find your page and follow you again.
And, if someone you’re following decides to make their updates private someday, you can’t request to follow them because Twitter thinks you already are!
