Blogs and Twitter are amazing ways to share your thoughts and get feedback. For indie mac developers Twitter is especially nice. Being an indie developer can be a lonely experience sometimes, and Twitter provides a sort of virtual set of coworkers that you can use as a stress reliever. (Not that anyone should think that Twitter or any other online service is a good substitute for interaction with real people). Fraser Speirs wrote about this and summed up the benefits of Twitter nicely with this statement:

Twitter has become a social/professional network for the independent Mac developer…I love Twitter because it has the immediacy of IM but removes the expectation of a prompt reply.

An interesting question related to this ability to shout out to the world as it were, is where does your company’s voice end and your personal voice begin? Especially when you are an indie developer and in a lot of people’s eyes (you == your company).

Earlier today Byran Gardner at Wired quoted something Daniel Jalkut said on Twitter.

Someone raised the question of whether or not Twitter feeds are something that you should ethically quote, especially without permission.

The question really isn’t twitter specific, the question to me is, if you are an indie software developer, where does your company’s voice end and your personal voice begin?

Does it end at the press release, the company blog, your personal blog, your twitter account, your email?

I don’t know the answer, but I imagine that this is an issue (not Daniel’s quote, but the issue in general) that is going to need some analysis.