What's In A Name?

What's in a name?  Well for me, my name is becoming more and more important, as far as my online identity is concerned. This is because, as social networking starts to take up more of our time and more social networking websites appear, we are looking, as individuals, for consistency by ensuring we have the same online presence throughout.

 

A prime example of how important a name is can be easily found by just looking at Facebook this week. Facebook decided to bring in usernames, simply meaning people could find your profile by typing facebook.com/YOURUSERNAME, because it was a feature of other sites and they don't want to lose visitors, so if you can't beat them you join them (or should I say copy them). With just a few days notice of this happening, Facebook managed to attract 500,000 username registrations with in 15 minutes of going live, 345,000 of which were in the first 7 minutes, and by the time the first hour had passed 1,000,000 usernames had been registered and, at the time of writing this, there had been over 3,000,000 usernames registered. What was even more impressive was that the usernames went active at 5:01am BST on a Saturday morning (9:01pm PDT Friday night) and they still attracted that much traffic, which just demonstrates how important we do find our online identities regardless of if it is our actual name, nickname or online persona.

 

Our online identities has also been on the agenda of Twitter this week, with the planned introduction of Verified Accounts, which is simply a badge as it were on the top of the profile that confirms that the twitter page your looking at is that of the genuine person and not an imposter. What this means to the average user, like you and I, is not a lot at the moment (although possibly will be in the future) as it has initially been targeted towards it's more high profile users, namely celebrities, due to the number of people that have created fake celebrity profiles and are then trying to be pass themselves off as genuine, which could lead to all sorts of accusations being made. An example of this is BBC Radio 1 Breakfast DJ Chris Moyles, who has mentioned a few times during his highly rated show about the twitter imposter's who have even tried to fool some the people that work on the show, that there him, and this is where having 'Verified Account' on your profile would help.

 

If your not a celebrity and want to protect and secure your online identity you have to be registered first, even if you don't intend on using the service straight away. For example, there is a new site called Audioboo that is starting to grow in popularity, due to the Stephan Fry affect, that I registered with a month or so ago, even though I am unable to use the site properly (as you need an iPhone to upload), just so I could makesure I got the username I wanted, for when I either get an iPhone or for when the service is be available on other mobile phones.

 

Ultimately, 'What's In A Name?' is how you define it and, in terms of the Internet, how concerned you are about having consistency between the different site you use.

 

http://www.audioboo.fm

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.facebook.com

Gordonator Salvation

In the week of the local and European elections, you could be forgiven for thinking it is more like a parody of the new Terminator film, with Gordon playing the emotionless tinman doing what he can to survive and a whole cast of MP's playing the resistance, albeit they are more like the resistance from 'Allo 'Allo!, than that of the Terminator franchise, and with the John Connor role yet to be cast.
 
The current battle seems to stem from the fiasco of the MP's expenses, which personally I wasn't surprised to find had been abused to its full extent although I have been surprised by the sheer range of scope there is for the claims that have been made.  The apparent plan of the resistence, is to distract and move the glare of the media from themselves and their expense claims and have the focus clearly on the dark lord himself.  It's not a bad plan, claim the leader you have supported all this time is unfit for purpose and to show how strongly you feel about this by resigning from your post in the cabinet and hope that as a result you have shifted enough of the focus away from the expenses, including your own, and be able to slip into the background and be virtually forgotten by the time the general election arrives in less than a year's time.
 
The main problem with the a plan of this nature is that unless you have a John Connor character who can take on and replace the 'The Gordonator' then you will not get enough support from the rest of the bad bunch to complete the mission and as it currently stands the resistance are more likely employ Rene Artois to lead their fight.
 
So as I write this, which is just before the results of the European elections are announced, there are many questions that will be asked and no doubt answered over the course of the next week and it currently looks like 'The Gordonator' may just win this battle but probably won't win the war and with 'Blair's Babes' being the more prominent people to have jumped ship, as well as the Lieutenant Hubert Gruber of this story played by James Purnell, I wonder who will be providing the material for all the nation's top comics of the next few weeks.
 
It's just a shame that there is only one more episode of the current series of 'Have I Got News For You'.