I was in a Tinychat for over an hour with my friends Tyme, Jennifer & Brent hashing out which name I wanted and why. They can tell you they thought it was funny at the time, but I was going to be sure of what I wanted BEFORE everyone had the ability to take names.

There were really two bad decisions. Bad Decision #1 is to have facebook all up in my billcammack google results by choosing my “government name”, which is also my brand name and the name of my website as my FB username. Bad Decision #2 is choosing a username that doesn't “dilute my results” and subsequently allowing some OTHER Bill Cammack to have my name… FORGET THAT!

The fact of the matter is that we don't have crystal balls, so there's no telling whether Facebook will become dominant as far as people searching for people on google or on the internet in general. If it goes that way, I'm in position, as usual. If it doesn't go that way, I still use FB to point to blog posts on billcammack.com, so I really dont' think it'll be an issue.

What you DON'T WANT is other people that happen to have the same name as you do getting props for YOUR media because they read your name somewhere, searched it, landed on someone else and followed them or added them as a friend because you weren't diligent in “defending” your brand name.

“Hey man, I posted on this too. I was wondering about this myself. Facebook.com/christine.cavalier is my vanity URL but I almost took /purplecar. My reasoning was this: every other web app I take the “username” purplecar and “real name” christine cavalier. Why should facebook be different? But then I thought about the search behaviors of people on Facebook.

People search Facebook in a unique manner, compared to other sites. They search for people, mostly, by just name, forgoing drilling down into networks or groups until after their initial search has turned up fruitless (yet abundant) search results. (We all are acutely aware of the search problems on Facebook).

Also, I considered the population. On sites like Jaiku, we are all social media industry people. These techie types know how to search on username AND then real name. More and more “normal” people are coming on Facebook, especially our schoolmates. How will they search for me? By my name.

It's possible that once “normal” people become familiar with the vanity URL, they won't search Facebook for a friend. Instead they will first try their luck on typing in facebook.com/christinecavalier (the dot is irrelevant, both christinecavalier and christine.cavalier will work).

So, there's my long explanation on how I came to break my standard username-first policy for social media sites. I treated Facebook as the unique exception (and crappy search engine) that it is.

-PC”

What did you guys choose, and why? Let me know here. Thanks!

I was in a Tinychat for over an hour with my friends Tyme, Jennifer & Brent hashing out which name I wanted and why. They can tell you they thought it was funny at the time, but I was going to be sure of what I wanted BEFORE everyone had the ability to take names.

There were really two bad decisions. Bad Decision #1 is to have facebook all up in my billcammack google results by choosing my “government name”, which is also my brand name and the name of my website as my FB username. Bad Decision #2 is choosing a username that doesn't “dilute my results” and subsequently allowing some OTHER Bill Cammack to have my name… FORGET THAT!

The fact of the matter is that we don't have crystal balls, so there's no telling whether Facebook will become dominant as far as people searching for people on google or on the internet in general. If it goes that way, I'm in position, as usual. If it doesn't go that way, I still use FB to point to blog posts on billcammack.com, so I really dont' think it'll be an issue.

What you DON'T WANT is other people that happen to have the same name as you do getting props for YOUR media because they read your name somewhere, searched it, landed on someone else and followed them or added them as a friend because you weren't diligent in “defending” your brand name.

“Hey man, I posted on this too. I was wondering about this myself. Facebook.com/christine.cavalier is my vanity URL but I almost took /purplecar. My reasoning was this: every other web app I take the “username” purplecar and “real name” christine cavalier. Why should facebook be different? But then I thought about the search behaviors of people on Facebook.

People search Facebook in a unique manner, compared to other sites. They search for people, mostly, by just name, forgoing drilling down into networks or groups until after their initial search has turned up fruitless (yet abundant) search results. (We all are acutely aware of the search problems on Facebook).

Also, I considered the population. On sites like Jaiku, we are all social media industry people. These techie types know how to search on username AND then real name. More and more “normal” people are coming on Facebook, especially our schoolmates. How will they search for me? By my name.

It's possible that once “normal” people become familiar with the vanity URL, they won't search Facebook for a friend. Instead they will first try their luck on typing in facebook.com/christinecavalier (the dot is irrelevant, both christinecavalier and christine.cavalier will work).

So, there's my long explanation on how I came to break my standard username-first policy for social media sites. I treated Facebook as the unique exception (and crappy search engine) that it is.

-PC”

What did you guys choose, and why? Let me know here. Thanks!