Name Checking

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on

People were making a big deal last week about Facebook allowing people to own their name as a URL for their profile. That means that I could grab facebook.com/ronkowitz (and fbook.me/ronkowitz or other permutations thereof). It doesn't seem so important to me, but claiming your online turf is part of having an online presence.

I now someone who has some celebrity who had to pay some serious money to buy her name as a domain because someone had grabbed it up, and "parked it" as an investment. I have read that parents are buying newborns their name as a domain.

You probably have signed up for some service and found that the USERNAME you wanted was taken. Who would have thought that "ronk" would be so popular. The site called namechk.com allows you to put in a username or vanity URL and see if it is still available at over 120 popular social networking/bookmarking websites.

Definitely useful if you are trying to promote your "brand" consistently across the Net. Probably also useful to find out if someone has already snagged that great name you came up with for that new venture you are starting. Sort of a poor man's trademark check.


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