To Tweet or not to Tweet?

In my recent experimenting with Twitter, I have come across several questions. One, that I have especially thought about lately, is whether or not to have multiple Twitter accounts.

Here's why... my personal, strictly social Twitter account, is where I post silly random quips during the day to interact with my family and friends. Personally, I don't think anyone is interested in those posts but my family and friends, and their interest could still be debated. :)

So, would I then want another "professional" Twitter account where I post updates of what I am doing related to work? The thought of this is rather aggravating because I already have way too much "technical clutter" to keep up with, i.e. several blogs, numerous blog subscriptions in my RSS reader, 10 email accounts, 5 wikis, a Facebook page and a partridge in a pear tree.

We have all heard horror stories of people losing their jobs for things they have posted on their Facebook and MySpace pages. Should that encourage us to keep personal and professional postings separate? We should all make note, though, that anything posted online can be found - even if we think we are keeping it private.

I went ahead and decided to create a "professional" Twitter account to interact with my colleagues at Kaplan University. I am going to experiment with using these 2 accounts for a while and then make a decision as to what to do. To begin with, I am simply going to update my status with what I am doing in regards to Kaplan on this new account. Even though I don't think my Kaplan Colleagues would be particularly interested in the fact that I am sitting in line at Starbucks, like my friends might be (because they would reply and ask me to bring them one), it still may be a way to build a community with co-workers who I only interact with online. For this reason, I may do some off-topic, personal posts on the professional Twitter account later.

What about you? Do any of you have ideas regarding how to handle the personal vs. professional aspects of social networking? If so, I would love to hear/read your comments!

Also, here is a link to a nice review of apps which will manage multiple Twitter accounts.