I have a flight at 7:30pm to head to San Francisco to spend time with my girlfriend and also to connect with some folks for work. There’s nothing abnormal about this routine, but on this night – I’m missing out on something that I’d like to have been a part of. Tonight at 10:01 (my time) I will be missing out on being “able to choose a username for [my] Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to [my] profile.”
Basically what that says is that as long as I’m sitting on an airplane, I’m not in front of a computer, trying my best to snag facebook.com/jeffrey. It’s ok though, and here’s why. I’m not Jeffrey. I’m Jeffrey Kalmikoff. Besides, as long as there’s that bastard giraffe hocking toys to kids, I’ll never be the Jeffrey. And really, if Toys ‘R’ Us folded tomorrow, and I did become the Jeffrey, it’s still really just be Jeffrey Kalmikoff.
I was talking to my younger brother Josh on the phone as I drove to the airport. We discussed a few things, including a really kick-ass idea he has for a gaming website, but also talked about snagging his Facebook vanity URL. His point of view, “if someone gets what I want, I’ll just think of something better. Something wittier.” “Josh” I said, “do yourself a favor and just get your name – that URL will likely outlast whatever you found funny or witty or interesting about something like Uncler3mus (his twitter name).” “Just trust me on this one,” I said.
Even in the last 6-7 months the shift from pseudonym to real name in one’s online identity has been pretty prevalent. Many of my friends (myself included) went from pseudonym to real name – and some from real name just down to initials. What the shift really means is that everyone is seeing the value in having a single name – or at least a few names that all essentially mean the same thing. For me I’m Jeffrey (twitter), JeffreyK (skype), Jeffrey.Kalmikoff (gmail), and the one I’m starting to phase out FancyJeffrey (aim) – which at the very least still has my name in it.
I wanted to share those anecdotes to illustrate what I’ve come to terms with, and I think that it’s important that other people try to realize it as well. Your name only matters as a way to be a linkable entity to an action. Having an awesome “online handle” isn’t going to make what you do online (or off) any better than if you would have been using your own name. We’ve learned this lesson in the last 10 years as we started out being scared to have people learn our real identities online, so we created fake ones (mine used to be iFDL). The time of fear online is long since past, so it’s time to stop hiding behind “RadDude199″ or “ButteflyGrl22″.
As the time ticks away until Facebook opens the flood gates to vanity URLs tonight, maybe try to resist the urge to go after your current online moniker or pseudonym, and just go with what’s real. Just be you.
15 Comments
Something about how my online moniker is synonymous with me would go here, but I couldn’t think of a way to put it without coming off as not serious enough or possibly snarky.
Isn’t Wevah your last name?
Well said Jeffrey.
I sort of managed to back-incorporate my online name back into my real name and now it’s stuck. There are a couple of arenas left where having a pseudonym is almist a requirement, and music is one of them.
Ben- Absolutely. In music, I’m not sure dropping monikers will ever happen. Besides, Ben XO has your name at least. It’s not like your name is Ben XO, but your real name is like Gerhardt or something. Anyway, it’s been too long since we’ve spoken! We have to catch up!
Jeffery: completely agree
Besides, facebook.com is not *the* namespace. It is *a* namespace. IMO, vastly more important that “facebook.com/YOURNAME” (or YOURBRAND) is “YOURNAME.com” and once you have that, you have “YOURNAME.com/facebook”, “YOURNAME.com/twitter”, etc. Sure, it would be nice to grab the FB vanity URL (or the Twitter vanity name), but if you don’t manage, don’t sweat it.
Well, it’s “Weaver”.
Uh, the giraffe is Geoffery. :)
There’s a lot of merit to this; it’s why I grabbed twitter.com/chriscardinal. I felt that using my own name instead of a psuedonym would reinforce who I was when I actually *met* people in real life. It’s pretty ridiculous to walk up and say “I’m disillusioned on so-and-so website.” If I get followed on the Twitter, I want to be building out my own brand, so to speak.
Good commentary on this.
Over time I have dropped one or two of my more ‘witty’ online handles, but I do think its valuable to hold only something that isn’t your own name as an identifier online. Not for hiding behind a fake name but for differentiation. You and I are blessed to have common names like Chris and Jeffrey so something else might be useful in some contexts.
Like in this comment I sign things with my name. On sites like Linkedin [and probably facebook] I will use my name as my user id. But in other circles, either less formal or more ‘public’, or more centered on something I’m creating online [twitter, message boards, flickr, etc] its back to a handle.
That said, using my name online is something I’ve always done. The college email address in the 90s was one of those fun initials + part of social security # deals, AIM and Yahoo Mail accounts from about that same time are also forms of my name.
In the end I think the most important thing is to not be impulsive with decisions like the Facebook username choice.
Depends on the venue, I guess. I obfuscate my identity behind a variation of my real name because I know the dangers of employers discovering hidden caches of vulgar content (*cough*YH*cough*)
But yeah – what FAndy said about owning yourname.com is of prime importance. From there you can do whatever you want.
But… you say you’re going to be on a plane and /jeffrey will be all alone out there? Unprotected from facesquatters and well-intentioned pranksters?
*drums fingers on chin…
On the other hand, if you have some hocuspocus name that only two people in the entire world have, chances are a) that it’s so unfamiliar that nobody can ever spell it correctly, and b) that you end up living in the same city as the other person, so not only is your name not a UUID; not even name@place is unique. :) (But hey, I’m moving.)
On the other hand, I don’t see how you actually gain anything by having a ton of subtly different Jeff-accounts that people still have to look up, rather than remembering one unique-if-unwieldy name. That way you just fail “practical” *and* “style.”
Hey great post and well said. Too many people hide behind a fake name and it just throws me off. As for me, I’ve always used my real name. Even when I first created a myspace, my name was “christayah” no spaces. Now for twitter and such I have shortened it to ‘ctayah’. Great post.
I couldn’t agree more. Nice post.