In communication forums like facebook (and blog comments!) the rate of information flow is relatively slow… people read the comments and look at the name. But on twitter there’s so much information flowing past, I believe that most people just scan the list looking for something that catches their eye. Some people’s tweets are more important to you than others and if your eye spots a tweet from them then you’ll definitely stop and read the tweet. Some others might skip by and sometimes not get read.

How do you identify which ones you’re definitely going to read & which ones are possibly less important? Your eye doesn’t have time to read the names – it’s spotting the avatars. So when you change your avatar there’s a period of time before people who are interested in your tweets re-associate that new avatar with your identity. During that re-association period your communication is going to be less effective because people might miss your tweets.

Although sometimes it works to your advantage. Look at @staciebee’s new Beaker avatar. Really stands out and gets a lot of attention. So maybe there’s also an upside

One thing I’d add about the avatar pic – don’t be tempted to keep changing it the way that many people seem to do with facebook profile pics. By all means change it briefly to indicate a special event or change it a couple of times a year, but don’t keep changing it for a new picture every month.

There’s so much information on twitter and it moves so fast, most people don’t read the names when they scan through their feed, they’re really just focusing on the pictures as they look for the ‘must read’ tweets. So your picture becomes your identity – keep changing it and people will lose track of you.