Comments on: Just be you

By: MtnDweller

MtnDweller — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:27:04 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. Nice post.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:05:48 +0000

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.

By: Azundris

Azundris — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:29:40 +0000

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.”

By: Markle

Markle — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:17:48 +0000

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…

By: Markle

Markle — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:17:00 +0000

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.

By: Chris Casciano

Chris Casciano — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:22:32 +0000

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.

By: Chris Cardinal

Chris Cardinal — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:20:27 +0000

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.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:16:56 +0000

Uh, the giraffe is Geoffery. :)

By: Wevah

Wevah — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:05:26 +0000

Well, it’s “Weaver”.

By: F. Andy Seidl

F. Andy Seidl — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:04:10 +0000

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.