How to Merge two Twitter Accounts

**To be clear — there is currently no way of truly merging Twitter accounts so that both follower groups show up on one account. That functionality is not available on Twitter, but this tutorial shows how you can change your Twitter followers from one account to another.**

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed some strange switching around with my account. Well, I have officially merged my two Twitter accounts — my blog one, and my personal — into one “Ginna” Twitter account. Huzzah!

This has been on my list to do for a while. I would tweet more from my @thatginnagirl than my @myprettypennies, but I had more followers at the @myprettypennies one. And I tried tweeting the same message sometimes to both accounts, but some people followed both, and that was slightly annoying to see the same tweet in a row.

So! Here are the simple steps to merge two twitter accounts. I realize this may not be timely or pertinent to you now, but if you ever find yourself in the situation I was, here’s how I did it:

1. Open two different browsers and login to both accounts.
I used Chrome and Firefox.

2. Decide which account you want as your official account.
For me, that was @myprettypennies since I already had 900+ followers. However, I wanted to keep  @thatginnagirl as my name instead of @myprettypennies. I knew my (100) twitter followers would remember it and not have any trouble finding me again.

3. Change the name on the account you want to lose to something else
For me that would be @thatginnagirl, which I changed it to @thatginnagirl2. Twitter recognizes your email and account settings as who you are, not your Twitter handle. Confused yet? Stick with me…

4. Next, go to the account you want to use and change the name to what the former name was in the account you don’t want to use.
So, I went into my @myprettypennies account and changed the Twitter name to @thatginnagirl, since it is now available. So now my @myprettypennies account had @thatginnagirl as the name. And all of my old @thatginnagirl followers were actually following @thatginnagirl2.

5. Tell your old account followers about your new account!
I wasn’t able to merge the followers from your old account to your new one. I am not sure it’s possible, unless you work at Twitter.  If anyone knows how, holler! But in order to tell your former followers about your new account, send out a tweet, something like this:

Then make sure you follow them from your other account, and they may be thoroughly confuse, but will soon catch on.

6. Secure your old twitter handle so that no one else can take it.
With an email I rarely use, I signed up for @myprettypennies so that no one else can take that handle and tweet from it.

Voila! That’s it. Now… who wants to follow me on Twitter? :)

–

PS- I also created an updated Facebook page… so head over and like it!

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  • I woud suggest opening a third twitter account to reserve @myprettypennies so no one tries to impersonate you (since all of your old twitter links mentioned in older posts will be to @myprettypennies) and have just post one message saying you moved.

    Kindness is the best accessory,
    Rebecca

  • If you can’t retain/merge the followers from both Twitter accounts… why not just tell everyone you’re deleting the old account & follow the new one? Confusing…

  • Thanks, this is quite a helpfull idea. Have been struggling with the same issue although I’m still not sure which of my both accountnames I want to keep?

  • Yes. Very helpful. Thanks so much! This wasn’t confusing at all! I actually thought of doing it this way but was afraid it wouldn’t work. Thanks for the post. :)

  • I currently have a personal (set to private) Twitter account, but I follow and am followed by some fellow-bloggers that I do not know in real life (less than 100). I recently made the decision to register a domain name, and will be setting up self-hosting the next few weeks, and I’m not sure what to do about Twitter. I’ve already created a second account with my new blog name to “save it” (which is how I landed on this post), but I’m not sure if I should merge the two, or keep them separate.

    Do you have any regrets on merging into one account? Would you recommend it?

    Thanks!!

  • Just what I needed. Having a dual monitor set up made it even easier! I had to round robin three names from an old business account, new business account, and personal account. Worked perfectly.

  • Will your tweets from old account transfer to the account Im now using w/ more followers?

    I would like to merge my personal account w/ more followers to my business account but want the tweets to stay visible on my profile wall.

    Any suggestions?

  • Awesome advice. I’d recommend one last step. Now change @thatginnagirl2 to @myprettypennies so that the old name still is under your control and not hijacked by someone else.

  • The title was misleading, it doesn’t actually solve the problem but a workaround solution.

  • Thoroughly confused and you still didn’t achieve what was set out which is to combine FOLLOWERS… mehh

  • This worked for me. But I have a question about changing my current twitter name again. What if I now what to change the twitter account everyone is following? Will I still keep them as followers?

  • The title is misleading as this is not merging. Guess you use that title to draw people to your website even though you don’t give us what we’re looking for.
    As a result, I won’t follow you, or share any of your stuff. Short term score, long-term fail

  • It all depends on what you define as “merging.” This is the closest you can get to combining two Twitter accounts, so it’s actually useful for people searching “merge two Twitter accounts.” So please get off of your high horse.