I agree that the name itself is meaningless right now. It all depends on what happens in the near future. If FaceBook becomes the AOL of times past, it’s going to be imperative that you own your own name. If it doesn’t, it’s not going to matter at all. It’s like who cares if you own a Ning site in your name? That’s never going to be worth anything. If FB becomes something similar to the Yellow Pages, for instance, your profile might become the most important property you “own”, and in that case, you want it to be named something that represents you to the fullest.

I agree with you that if you choose one of these fancy names, like “Glowbird”, it’s like a stage name. Depending on how you build your reputation, you might want to be known forever as “Glowbird”, like how Jennifer Lopez is known as J-Lo or Sean Carter is known as Jay-Z. If you ask someone if they saw Sean Carter, they’re going to say “who?”. If you ask if they saw Jay-Z, they know who you’re talking about and can answer the question.

That’s all well and good, assuming you’re never going to stop using your fancy name. Some people try to use their nicknames as a springboard to their “government name” being known. I recognized this in, I believe, 2006 and started branding my name, so now, I’m page 1 google for my first name, AND for my last name.

The thing is that people don’t think ahead. Do you want people calling you PurpleCar or Pistachio or ReelSolid.TV when you’re 50?… 60?… If you do, more power to ya, and keep rolling with it. If not, it’s time to start branding your government name.

My real name, Lisa Creech Bledsoe, is just too long to fit in some networks’ user name spaces. So a couple years ago when I started my blog, The Glowing Edge, I began to use Glowbird as my “short” moniker. It’s a little messy in some places (I signed up for Linked In with Glowbird before I knew a single thing about Linked In, and now I can’t change it in the URL, although people can search me on my real name), but for the most part, having both works okay.

Who KNOWS if Facebook will be the next AOL… and so what if it is? Where the heck is AOL now? I never hear about it anymore.

Yes, Google search results are another thing to think about. It’s sad that we have to stick with our government names as brand names but that is how social media is going right now.