Internet Handles
I've been thinking about internet handles and email addresses, and what the future holds.
If you know someone with a fairly common name who has a gmail account, then you can sort of tell how tech aware they were in the early 2000s by looking at their address. JohnDoe and John.Doe were probably pretty early adapters, JohnDoe65 and JohnDoeDenver were probably a little late. And JohnDoeLovesBacon01 and ExtermiRat2265 were a bit behind the curve. If you have a relative now who you're trying to get a gmail account you probably already know that any combination of initials and names is already taken, that you have to add in locations, numbers, or something that might still give them some uniqueness.
Forums have the same thing. The "good" or "common" names often fill up fast. Pretty soon there's a Dark and a Dork, a Sara111 and a Sara666, a Falcon and a Falchion. Userpics are necessary to distinguish participants on sites like LJ, or large forums, simply because too many names can look alike. One sign, to me, of potential forum explosion is that there are simply so many people that name generation begins to become slightly bizarre.
Google, like most sensible internet sites, gives you your email address forever. Even if you delete your account, the name remains inaccessible to prevent someone from stealing your identity by just taking the account after you delete it. This means that the person who is currently JohnDoe at gmail will always be JohnDoe at gmail, even after he's dead. An entire generation of John Does will grow up without ever having a chance to be JohnDoe, or John.Doe, or JohnDoe09 or anything because those are already taken. In a few years, I wonder how many other names will be taken, how many other nicknames.
I can still remember when you could go out and pick up an email address that was basically either your name or a favorite internet nickname. Now it can be hard to do either. I wonder how long it will be before that makes me an anachronism. And I wonder how the internet will look then.
If you know someone with a fairly common name who has a gmail account, then you can sort of tell how tech aware they were in the early 2000s by looking at their address. JohnDoe and John.Doe were probably pretty early adapters, JohnDoe65 and JohnDoeDenver were probably a little late. And JohnDoeLovesBacon01 and ExtermiRat2265 were a bit behind the curve. If you have a relative now who you're trying to get a gmail account you probably already know that any combination of initials and names is already taken, that you have to add in locations, numbers, or something that might still give them some uniqueness.
Forums have the same thing. The "good" or "common" names often fill up fast. Pretty soon there's a Dark and a Dork, a Sara111 and a Sara666, a Falcon and a Falchion. Userpics are necessary to distinguish participants on sites like LJ, or large forums, simply because too many names can look alike. One sign, to me, of potential forum explosion is that there are simply so many people that name generation begins to become slightly bizarre.
Google, like most sensible internet sites, gives you your email address forever. Even if you delete your account, the name remains inaccessible to prevent someone from stealing your identity by just taking the account after you delete it. This means that the person who is currently JohnDoe at gmail will always be JohnDoe at gmail, even after he's dead. An entire generation of John Does will grow up without ever having a chance to be JohnDoe, or John.Doe, or JohnDoe09 or anything because those are already taken. In a few years, I wonder how many other names will be taken, how many other nicknames.
I can still remember when you could go out and pick up an email address that was basically either your name or a favorite internet nickname. Now it can be hard to do either. I wonder how long it will be before that makes me an anachronism. And I wonder how the internet will look then.