So you’ve taken the plunge and finally created yourself a Twitter account.  Well bravo new recruit and welcome to the Rebel Alliance.  Now the first thing you are going to want to do is get your profile page set up and customized.  Probably the single most important part of this profile creation process is selecting what photo to use for your avatar (primary picture).  The Twitter galaxy is an environment where people converse with one another, therefore you should choose a photo of yourself.  People will want to envision themselves talking to you so be sure that you do not choose some random object, animal, or a group shot of you with others.  Keep in mind that when people see your posts in their feeds, your photo will be pretty small so make sure your picture is focused more on your face than one of a full body or distance shot.  Think of it along the same lines as a drivers license or yearbook type of photo.  As a general rule of thumb try not to constantly change your profile picture.  I say this because a lot of people get used to seeing and recognizing posts by user images and not by reading the actual user names. 

From a technical perspective, be sure to use a .jpg extension and try to keep the size of the photo relatively small in weight (ideally under 50 kb).  The biggest reason for this is that some applications will not render profile photos if they are in other extensions (.gif, .bmp, .png, etc) or if they are over a certain size even though Twitter via the web browser shows them.  You will notice this a lot in applications like Tweetdeck when you see posts show up with a blank box for a profile image.  This means they have either used an extension the application doesn’t recognize or the size of the file is too big to generate and the API blocks it.  Also, be sure to keep the overall pixel dimensions at least around 250×250 or larger.  The images will automatically display in a thumbnail version so you don’t need to make it in a reduced thumbnail size yourself.   If you make the image too small when your thumbnail is expanded within the application preview window larger than your original size it will cause the image to pixelate and distort. 

Here are a couple good examples of your space scoundrel buddy Social Media Han Solo:

Well get on out there and upload that profile pic so you can start exploring the Twitter galaxy in the name of the Republic.  May the force be with you.