IDs, Vanity URLs and YOUR NAME
With the recent rush for vanity URLs on Facebook, I’ve had a number of discussions about User IDs and vanity URLs on the various social media sites.
Hopefully the proliferation of accounts/profiles will end soon with OpenID, Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect and other initiatives. Until then, here are my thoughts on the topic:
- The most important thing on these sites isn’t necessarily the vanity url or ID, but your name. Make sure that you are consistent with your name. This means that if you happen to be Bob Smith - don’t also be Bobby Smith and Robert Smith. I have some IDs that are “stu” or “stuminiman”, but I always use “Stuart Miniman” as the name on the account.
- When choosing your name, I agree with experts like Louis Gray and Dan Schawbel who recommend not putting any punctuation “.”, “-“, “_” in between your first and last name when choosing an ID or url.
- Don’t obsess over the vanity urls too much - for most networks, people will either be logged in and searching for your name or you will be sending them a link. If you have a common name, you may need to add a middle initial or number (BobESmith or BobSmith7) - once again, consistency and details so that people can find the correct Bob Smith are useful. I’d recommend against using your company name as part of the ID to differentiate, since you could leave the company or the company could change names.
- Twitter: make sure that your “name” is entered properly. If you have ID @bobsmith - you need to make sure that your name is Bob Smith or neither the Twitter “Find People” or Google Search will know that you are either a Bob or Smith. While it is best to have your name, if you can go with a shorter ID that is easy to remember - this is the 1 site that I would recommend going for something other than your full name. Personally, my name is long and not easy for people to remember how to spell. I would never get Re-Tweeted if people had to have @stuartminiman - and forget about someone sending me a quick direct message from their mobile. I was lucky enough to grab @stu.
- LinkedIn provides the option for a “Public Profile” url - this is great for quickly sharing an “online resume”, but the url does not show up in Google Searches (your name and profile # show up instead).
- Your “Bio” on Twitter and FriendFeed will also show up on searches - if you are looking to grow your personal brand, fill these out with good details. Another way to not have to worry about people finding you is to use an aggregation site like FriendFeed - one stop for everywhere just about everything that I’m doing on the web.
Unfortunately, the more common your name, the harder this becomes. I’ve got it easy, not only am I the only Stuart Miniman, but there are only a few in the Miniman family that are online (and let me know if you bump into any of my cousins or other relatives online - although we are not part of the Lego series), so other than some Mini Cooper fans, I’ve been able to get Miniman as an ID relatively easily.
In closing, a QUESTION FOR YOU, I’ve been considering opening a blog on TypePad or WordPress (Tumblr is great for casual posts or sharing multimedia, but it is a bit limiting): 1) Do you like what you’ve seen here and find it of value for me to continue/expand? 2) What do you think about which platform to choose and should I use my old website url (http://www.minimans.com - my wife ran the site, haven’t touched it since we had kids, see the family corner for some fun stuff)?
Thanks for stopping by,
Stuart Miniman
Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn: /miniman
Twitter @stu
