What To Do When Your @Name Is Taken
This post originally appeared on the Mentally Friendly blog.
In 1997 I set up my first email address for school. Using your real name wasn’t cool, so I started my life online as flower_girl@hotmail.com *cringe*, which later transitioned to red_saint42@hotmail.com
*double-cringe*.
I probably could have used my full name, but it was all about the alias so I chose to include random numbers and unexplainable/inexcusable references to start building my identity. Did I mention I was 10?
18-years down the track it’s 2015 and the majority of us have moved past using an alias and towards transparency naming conventions. I now use my full name in my email address and social handles, and as platforms such as Twitter and Instagram increase in their influence and we continue to use them to promote and build our professional and personal profiles, usernames and social handles have become prime real estate — and hard to come by — for not only individuals, but for brands and businesses.
They’re seen as so valuable in fact that although Twitter bans the buying and selling of handles, The New York Post reported that JPMorgan Chase offered $20,000 to the owner of the @Chase Twitter handle in 2013. Although the owner of the handle at the time declined the offer, he worked with Twitter to move over to a new handle as he was (allegedly) faced with trademarking issues.
But of course, you know why JPMorgan Chase would have made the offer. There’s no doubt that consistent naming aids discoverability, growing and servicing communities, and building brand recognition. I can’t imagine how many startup business names have been influenced by what handles are and are not available for use, because when you can’t get the name you want, or at least a logical name for a brand, you suddenly find yourself grasping at straws.
I’ve experienced this several times before, most recently with Mentally Friendly. In 2009 MF set up its Twitter handle and as @mentallyfriendly was one character over the limit, an alternative was chosen: @mf_news.
We know, it’s not a great handle. And for the past few years, it hasn’t been a priority to change it. But as the agency has grown and changed over the years, a strong social media presence has become more and more important. Recently we’ve been taking steps to improve this (but that’s a blog post for another time), and part of that process was changing our handle to something that reflected our purpose on Twitter.
Our friends call us MF, so that’s where we started.
Here is a screenshot from one of the many emails I sent that listed numerous options — both taken and available. As you can see, the struggle was real.
We eventually settled on @mf_says for a number of reasons (including the below), but also as it was more representative of what we wanted to use the channel for (broader than just news). It also worked well within the context of the composition of a tweet, i.e brand (MF) + active verb (says) + statement/question (tweet).
So, while we’ll admit our Twitter handle is a compromise, it’s a good solution. If you’re experiencing a similar problem, here are a few criteria we used to make our decision.
- Keep it short
- Begin with the name of your company, so if people forget it, at least it will be listed in the auto-complete if they follow you
- Avoid buzzwords to increase longevity
- Avoid hidden words where possible (I once had to tell a client that I could see “fart” in their Twitter handle. Awkward, but I regret nothing)
And don’t forget to give us a shout on Twitter at @mf_says. We’d love to hear from you.
