BJP president Amit Shah changed his twitter handle on Tuesday. He will now tweet from @AmitShah. Earlier, his handle was @AmitShahOffice.
BJP president who is very active on social media including twitter informed his followers with a tweet. Shah who has so far done more than 1200 tweets has more than 1.32 million followers on the micro blogging site. While, his name change will not affect his followers or tweets, any tweet or retweet he was mentioned in will still be under his old handle name, and will no longer be linked to his account.
Dear friends, Please note the change in my twitter handle @AmitShah
— Amit Shah (@AmitShah) October 20, 2015
What Happens When You Change Your Twitter Handle
Luckily, it’s very easy to update your handle. From your page, find the gear icon at the top right, click Settings, and it’ll be the first text box you encounter, labeled “Username.” If your new name is available, you can change it, and instantly you will be @NewName, without losing a single follower.
The problem is this opens some strange loopholes in the Twitterverse. Your new tweets will come from @NewName. Your old ones will stay on your profile, rebranded with @NewName. But any tweet or retweet you were mentioned in will still be under your @OldName, and will no longer be linked to your account. Conversations will suddenly become very one-sided, as all the messages from the second party disappear, leaving only your own. This is because mentions in tweets are based on text, not unique IDs, so Twitter will not change your friend’s tweet just because you changed your name. Instead, the link will go to a 404 page… that is, until someone snaps up your old handle.
If you want to protect your previous username, create a new account with a new email address, and grab your @OldName. Your profile will not repopulate with mentions or previous tweets, but if someone clicks on a mention of @OldName, it will link back to this second account. You then have two options: continue using the profile as a second persona, or just post something like “I changed names; follow me @NewName instead” and leave it as an empty account.
Although all traces of mentions under your @OldName will have disappeared from your profile, they still linger in your “Notifications” tab. Since a regular download of your Twitter data won’t scoop this up, you can archive all this activity by opening the Notifications page, right-clicking anywhere on it, choosing “Save As” with the format of “Web Page, Complete,” and this will create a duplicate of the page stored locally on your own computer.