I have always had a fascination with generic monikers on the internet. Back in middle school, I collected AIM screen names by acquiring them through less than kosher means. I used the screen name ‘teddy’ for a while on AIM until someone offered me $250 for it. The funny thing is – 6 years later, I still stay in touch with the guy who bought it. He even swam against my roommate last year in a NEWMAC meet at Wheaton. There was a strange culture of people who discovered AOL exploits and took advantage of them to gain access to generic screen names. They generally congregated in AIM chatrooms to discuss their practices and tout their ‘elite’ screen names. Who knows what these people are doing now. What is usership like on AIM these days, anyway? I would imagine it has plummeted. I think dabbling in this strange practice back in middle school was my foray into domaining. The big difference is that domaining is actually a business – a big one.
After using the Twitter name, @ted0, for a while, I grew envious of the owner of @teddy. I shot him a Facebook message and much to my surprise, he handed the account over to me. This friendly German med-school student (??) could sense my profound interest in owning a more generic Twitter handle. However, having such a name comes with a lot of baggage – mostly in the form of several daily random @replies.
As you can see, I get a lot of junk @replies from people either entering @teddy by accident or thinking i’m someone else. I can’t imagine the crap that people with super generic names have to sift through.
I decided to do a little breakdown of the one letter Twitter users. Why? Why the hell not? Plus, I needed a break from studying for LSE exams… but that’s a topic of discussion best left for a separate post.
@a Andrei Zmievski
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: “Founder”
@b Brian Griffing
Location: Spokane
Occupation: Musician
@c Coley Cheng
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: graphic designer and UX engineer
@d Dave Bragdon
Location: Brooklyn
Occupation: ?
@e Erin
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Occupation: ?@f Fred Oliveira
Location: Valley?
Occupation: “Founder”
@g Greg Leding
Location: Arkansas!
Occupation: State Representative
@h Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson
Location: Dublin
Occupation: Engineer (PHP)
@i Kayla Hawkins
Location: ?
Occupation: ?
@j Juliette Melton
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: product design (?)
@k Kevin Cheng
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: product design
@l ?
Location: ?
Occupation: ?
@m Mark Douglass
Location: Kreuznach, Germany
Occupation: ?
@n Naoki Hiroshima
Location: Palo Alto
Occupation: “Founder”
@o Say-O.com
@p Paolo I.
Location: ?
Occupation: ?
@q Ariel Raunstien
Location: Tel Aviv
Occupation: “Founder”
@r Rex Hammock
Location: Nashville
Occupation: “Founder”
@s Sandy
Location: Portland, OR
Occupation: ?
@t Tantek Çelik
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: “Founder”
@u ?
@v William Lawrence
Location: DC
Occupation: “Senior Accessibility Specialist”
@w Walter
@x Gene X.
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: Photographer
@y Reyhan Dhuny
Location: London
Occupation: ?
@z Zach Brock
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: Engineer
So here you have it…the ABCs of Twitter. It’s quite clear and not very surprising that the majority of these people are from the Valley and involved in startups in some way. Most of the people with generic usernames on Twitter, or in any online service for that matter, are early adopters or friends or family that beta tested the product. Having such a username sounds like simply a novelty but in reality, it really can have an affect on your level of engagement with your followers, memorability/brandability, and most importantly, your level of awesomeness.
