Comments on: Social Media User Names Becoming More Like Domain Names

By: clayton narcis

clayton narcis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:09:51 +0000

Brand owners is gonna have a hell lot of more headache with trademark protection when the momentum builds up. With more and more social media sites booming up, brand owners will be fighting on a different dimension.

Good luck, your gonna need it.

I’m wondering whether trademark protection company are already offering such extensive services. Username trademark protection on social media sites. that would be interesting.

By: Adam Strong

Adam Strong — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:10:40 +0000

thanks @angelasiefer ;)

By: Angela Siefer

Angela Siefer — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:21:49 +0000

Adam,
Superb article. You have hit an issue that few are discussing or recognizing. Thanks for the solid analysis. I’ll tweet it asap :-)

Angela

By: name

name — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 02:36:40 +0000

Social Media User Names Becoming More Like Domain ……

Bookmarked your post over at Blog Bookmarker.com!…

By: wannadevelop.com

wannadevelop.com — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:32:58 +0000

The best thing about Twitter is that it is free… Everybody should grab their own ID’s / names :)

Mike

By: jp

jp — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:37:20 +0000

I had the same idea about ebay when it first started getting popular around ’97. I spent a long time to come up with the best username I could, figuring I could sell the name someday. Sadly the best I could come up with at the time was “ESalesPerson”. I think my feedback score is like 50 or so now. Anyone want to buy it?

I got this idea after hearing about people selling domain names for big money back in the day. Sadly I didn’t buy any domain names then, but I remember searching and seeing many available domain names, most specifically I remember going to Network Solutions site late at night in my dorm room, and I randomly searched for Banana.com. It was available. I thought to myself, what the heck am I going to do with Banana.com and passed it up. Looks like Michael Castello picked it up shortly after. Now today I’d pay much more than the $35 per year it would have cost then for Banana.com and I’m still not sure exactly what I’d do with it.

By: Adam Strong

Adam Strong — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:53:21 +0000

Interesting story Kellie. Looks like you got to keep it. I wonder how many other stories there are like this. Thanks for sharing.

By: Kellie Peterson

Kellie Peterson — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:13:19 +0000

Adam – this is a great article.

I signed up for Twitter not long after it launched and got “kellie”. Didn’t really do anything with it for some time. Several months ago Twitter contacted me about getting my username:

“I noticed you haven’t used your Twitter account in about 4 months. It looks like you may not be using the account. We usually don’t remove accounts unless they are inactive for 9 months, however, since we just hired someone here at Twitter named Kellie, I thought I’d ask if you’d be willing to give up the user name.”

Which, you know, is kind of BS.

Yeah, I hadn’t posted but that doesn’t mean I hadn’t logged in and followed other people. And you know there are usernames which have been “inactive” for much longer than nine months. I was a bit peeved, even felt a bit like I’d better use it or lose it. They offered to “try” to get me a generic premium in exchange for it, but still. The whole thing was weird.