Share Dialog
Yesterday, I started a short series of posts on the global namespace for consumer web services. My quick and highly unscientific survey of readers showed a surprisingly high usage of usernames based on real names. I suspect that to be highly skewed by the audience for my blog.
An important historic alternative has been to pick a distinctive username that bears no relationship to one’s first name and/or last name. Such user “handles” go back at least as far as CB Radio, dial-up bulletin board services and a bit later services such as IRC. In a pre-web world, each of those networks was closed and separate and there was no notion of search or discovery across them. At that time, there was also a seemingly clear separation between real space and cyberspace and for a long time separate offline and online “personas” were relatively easy to maintain.
That separation seems to be collapsing now as services are increasingly becoming social. If I want to find my real world friends on a service I need to be able to recognize them. Mostly this is accomplished by comparing the user base of a new service to some existing social graph, which could be in the form of one’s email contacts, Facebook friends or Twitter follows. In all of these cases once I discover potential matches, the actual likelihood of recognition is increased by the use of real names and – as several people pointed out in yesterday’s comments – recognizable and consistent avatars.
Add to this the overall explosion of consumer services that all require a username because they have “social” features and want to drive user engagement (even something minimal such as “favorites” generally requires a named user profile) and I believe that we have a global personal namespace problem. In fact, there is some indication that we already have a sufficient level of “username anxiety” that some people drop out of registering for a new service if they are asked to pick a username. I assume that is because they are worried about having to come up with yet another username should their desired one be already taken.
Yesterday, I started a short series of posts on the global namespace for consumer web services. My quick and highly unscientific survey of readers showed a surprisingly high usage of usernames based on real names. I suspect that to be highly skewed by the audience for my blog.
An important historic alternative has been to pick a distinctive username that bears no relationship to one’s first name and/or last name. Such user “handles” go back at least as far as CB Radio, dial-up bulletin board services and a bit later services such as IRC. In a pre-web world, each of those networks was closed and separate and there was no notion of search or discovery across them. At that time, there was also a seemingly clear separation between real space and cyberspace and for a long time separate offline and online “personas” were relatively easy to maintain.
That separation seems to be collapsing now as services are increasingly becoming social. If I want to find my real world friends on a service I need to be able to recognize them. Mostly this is accomplished by comparing the user base of a new service to some existing social graph, which could be in the form of one’s email contacts, Facebook friends or Twitter follows. In all of these cases once I discover potential matches, the actual likelihood of recognition is increased by the use of real names and – as several people pointed out in yesterday’s comments – recognizable and consistent avatars.
Add to this the overall explosion of consumer services that all require a username because they have “social” features and want to drive user engagement (even something minimal such as “favorites” generally requires a named user profile) and I believe that we have a global personal namespace problem. In fact, there is some indication that we already have a sufficient level of “username anxiety” that some people drop out of registering for a new service if they are asked to pick a username. I assume that is because they are worried about having to come up with yet another username should their desired one be already taken.
Share Dialog
Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Subscribe to Continuations
Subscribe to Continuations
>500 subscribers
>500 subscribers
No activity yet