Great article. One thing to point out is that iChat allows you to integrate with your Address Book, so that if you want you're able to set things up to use real names when you're talking. It makes vcards that much more useful.
URL-names just hit me as the breakthrough of Twitter, actually. I hadn't understood the power of Twitter at all until the other day I was reading a blog where the author referred to someone as @handle. My name is not unique: but, if we had a service that got enough adoption that gave everyone a globally unique string identifier, you could unambiguously reference real people across any medium. That's really powerful, and I think it's just starting to dawn on us the different ways we could use that. I still don't see an obvious monetization strategy; but people said the same thing about Google in 2000, so I don't want to be one to talk on that.
Yes but easier to control access. You don't usually want to give out your email address as a form of general ID, and there are all kinds of clever email-hiding methods used to keep from being crawled by spammers (i.e., foo at bar dot com or foo at google's email service). And @handle just seems more manageable (and more global) than foo@bar.com
More global? I might be misunderstanding you but email is everywhere. It's one of the things that is recognisable by your parents, maybe even grandparents. Wouldn't it be simpler, instead of trying to build out @handle usage, to add more control to emails? Everyone has one, they're much more open since only twitter (I think) has @handle things, and much much much more accessible (and global). Gmail has fantastic filters already, a bit of a pain to set up but they work. Wouldn't an improvement on those be better?
By more global I just meant that @foo would effectively put everyone under the same domain. Email just feels more fragmented.
Edit: also email puts restrictions on your identity. You're foo at some domain. @foo lets you pick a unique name that's valid online once you're old enough to pick who you want to be, without the footnote of _domain_ attached. Sort of how we all recognize Paul Graham as "pg", which fits his style.
> You don't usually want to give out your email address as a form of general ID,
But why is that? Is it because people will abuse it and send you data you don't want (spam)?
The same problem applies to twitter ids, except that not many people are spamming yet (I assume).
I guess there's also a single-point to detect spammers, which might make detection easier, but I'd be surprised if that was enough to control the problem.
I agree with you 100% and use @dawson on almost all communications, the fact it's now recognised as a Twitter handle by the majority just shows how far the service has come.
Interesting article but it's been a while since I've so strongly disagreed with everything someone sensible has written down in such a delightful manner ;-)
Just to pick two examples:
success will find the designer who most nearly replicates the world offline online
No way! Microsoft Bob, anyone? Dragging offline metaphors online can work but it fails more often than it succeeds (it even goes deeper than that - think of those who replicate desktop interfaces on the Web.. eugh!). The online world is a new one, not one that should mirror the offline world. Heck, even the newspaper industry is finally waking up to that one..
And with regards to Twitter URLs vs Facebook URLs, etc, I can use my Twitter URL as a URL in all my OTHER social networking sites, on my business cards, in my e-mails, etc.. but Facebook? I need a URL to be able to do that. Further, I'll often use URLs as a direct scheme to find things I want.. example I know that I'll find some interesting Python stuff if I go to: http://del.icio.us/popular/python .. or how about interesting "news"? http://del.icio.us/popular/news .. these sorts of schemes are a big win whether it's for people's handles, general tags, or whatever.
Seems like all these arguments are stemming from the (newly resurfaced) debate about "online personal brand", and creating an identity as such. I'm all for diluting these namespaces with GUIDs or similar--who's to say I'm the most important Joe Smith in the world?
"Online Personal Brand" is certainly something I've considered - it's why I've never cultivated a handle and just register as 'Jacob Aldridge' (or as close as User ID formats allow) wherever I go.
There's the fear that this involves one part of my life (say, work) with another (say, a weird fan film I did when I was at uni), but I actually enjoy combining them - my business clients enjoy knowing about my Guinness World Record, HN etc.
Five years ago it was much easier for me - probably 80% of the ego surf for my name was me. There's been a glut of Jacob Aldridges reaching their teenage years (and therefore Facebook, media etc) since then - much more diluted Google / Brand results.
Actually, I don't mind my name being a URL at all. My first name's Chirag and my site is http://chir.ag and I wouldn't mind getting facebook.com/chirag either. Where's the option on Facebook where I can set that up?
