Usernames on social media sites tell a lot about a person, and they can be a central portion of personal branding online. That’s why people get so upset when they create a username only to find that someone else has already taken it. So unless you’re a social media blogger that gets to test products before they’re available to the public, or you’re just an early adopter that manages to jump on board to new social media sites, then there’s a good chance you’re not going to get the username you want.
If you’re curious as to whether or not your vanity URL or username is available on a particular site, you can check out KnowEm, a service that checks various social media services for this purpose. KnowEm checks 120 of the most popular social media sites for whatever username you choose. These sites, which range from Aviary to Zoomr, are listed alphabetically on KnowEm’s homepage. Roll over the logo for any of these social media sites, and you’ll get a brief description of that service. Click on the logo and a new window will open up for that particular social media site.
On the top of the page, however, you’ll see a space to type in your desired username. KnowEm will run through all 120 social media sites. A green check beside a social media site logo means you’re good to go. A red “x” mark means the username has already been taken.
Now all you have to do is go through each site and register your username before someone else gets their hands on it. If you’d like KnowEm to go through all 120 sites and create your username for you, pay up $64.95 and utilize its premium service.
Just yesterday I wrote about Tweexchange, which is a service that provides an exchange marketplace for Twitter usernames and vanity URLs. While KnowEm won’t allow you to purchase your desired username from any of these services, the emergence of such services indicates that the realm of cyber-squatting is gaining new ground with social media services. There’s even a trend of getting social media usernames for infants so they’ll be able to have their desired username once they become old enough to begin using these services.
But with services like OpenID, MySpace ID and Facebook Connect, are we going to need to even bother with creating usernames for popular (or unpopular, for that matter) social media services? And in offering a premium service for registering a single username across multiple social media sites, is KnowEm actually encouraging cybersquatting?
As large networks such as Facebook further establish their platform and become central to cross-network integrated applications, I expect that more services will allow you to use your existing username for their service as well. That means that KnowEm will need to broaden its feature offerings, to perhaps offer recommendations on which services to use, or suggestions for usernames across the board. Either way, KnowEm will do best to find a way to go along with the OpenID trend.