This may seem like a strange topic for me to be writing about, but it is one that drives me crazy. Not all Twitter profile pics are equal. There are different types; some good, some bad. To start, let’s go over a few of the basic types of twitter profile pics: (please note: If I used your twitter picture on this, don’t hate me. I may very well love you, I just needed some evidence.)
The Standard Headshot 
Pretty easy to explain. Just a plain old cropped in shot of shoulders and head. The face is clearly distinguishable, and I have the greatest chance of recognizing you in person if you use this type of photo.
The Full Body 
The fully body shot on twitter is exactly what it sounds like. Head to toe. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure you have pretty feet. But you are overlooking a very important part of the Twitter profile pic: it is TINY. You get a roughly 50X50px area to show me who you are. At that size, your full body shot looks like a stick figure in the frame.
The Uncropped Shot 
This one gets me every time. In case you didn’t notice, the image that shows up next to your name is square (you know, the shape with four equal sides). Yet, even with this very obvious fact, I still see people using images in their pictures that are not square. This results in a terrible crop that ends up showing me some random body part.
The Candid 
This is actually one of my favorites. This is not a profile picture at all. Rather, this is an every-day image of you that you have cropped to use as a profile pic. When this is done right, it can be beautiful.
The Silhouette 
The silhouette is an “artsy” shot of yourself in which you are completely unrecognizable. If you are really trendy, you probably even color shifted the images so your abstract-self is a different color.
The Buddy Shot 
We get it: you love your wife. We love her too, but there just isn’t enough room in that tiny little picture for you to show everyone how much you care about her. To get back to the explanation, the Buddy Shot is the commonly seen shot of multiple people in the frame. Besides the rant I went on above, I see this used with a group of friends all the time. The problem is that it makes it hard to know which on of the people you are, especially if the people in the shot are the same gender.
The Cartoon 
The cartoon is the profile pic that doesn’t have a picture of you at all. Instead, it has a cartoon image of something else. This type of profile pic can be humorous, especially if the image you choose has some resemblance to you and your personality. The only problem with this, much like some of the others, is that you are not recognizable in the real world by this image.
Now that we have covered the basic styles, here are a few DOs and DONTs –
DO – Crop tight. We want to see your face so we can connect with you.
DO – Think outside the box. Some of the best profile pics I see on twitter are the candid shots that are out of the box.
DONT – Take the picture with a bunch of your friends.
DONT – forget to crop your image to a square.
DO – Follow me on twitter, here.
-matt
So then – I ask you – what do you think of my profile pic:
http://www.twitter.com/adamwc/
I was recently at a conference and there was a guy (probably late 50s) who said “I just LOVE your profile picture – so creative!!!” And it was the first time I’d heard that but…
Other people just say that it seems like I’m shouting at them 😉
Adam –
Love your twitter picture. It makes each of your tweets seem important because it is being yelled at me :).
Having a “good” twitter picture is completely subjective. The most important thing is that it is a good representation of who you are. That is why I like the candid shot so much. I feel like it gives a little bit more insight into the person than just a regular headshot.
Thanks for commenting, Adam!
-matt
Great post, Matt – – yet you forgot one very frequently used Twitter Pic…The Pet. I run across many a Twit using their dog, cat, bird, [insert other non-humans here]… which is great, but…I like putting a face to a name, is all 🙂
AWW MAN! How could I forget the classic Pet Shot?
I agree with you though. Personally, I just really like to have a face to put with the name. I follow a lot of people on twitter that I do not personally know, so their profile picture is their physical identity to me. If I could use your profile picture to accurately recognize you in public, then I think it is a good one.
Thanks for commenting. Can’t wait to see you again in April.
-matt
What do you think of mine?
-Your beloved wife
Great article Matt, had never really thought about it, but makes good sense!
Another suggestion is to use a slightly larger picture, then when someone wants to see a better version, they can click on your picture and get a larger more detailed version (warning this is not always a good thing ;).
If you upload the standard twitter image size and then click on the profile picture, it will just show you the same full sized picture (you obviously don’t want to use too large of an image 😉
For those of us “further along in years” (aka:older) we don’t have the keen vision some of you younger bucks do, so most twitter icons are not clearly recognizable unless you know the person well. 😉
Chrome “Photo Zoom” extension is handy for this, when you roll over a image it will bring up a preview! Especially when you are following a group of guys you met a a conference or something and trying to put the names to the faces…
GBY,
-R
Good suggestions, Robert. Having the larger image can be very helpful. This last weekend I was at a conference with thousands of people in LasVegas, and someone sent me an @reply on Twitter asking if they could meet me in the main expo. Having never met this person face to face, I had quite a hard time picking them out in a crowded expo based only on a tiny image.
Thanks for commenting.
-matt