

Ask HN: Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure? - sam_in_nyc

I'm going to launching a couple of things and want to be sure I get the right accounts set up for these .com's.<p>I'm thinking: @mydotcom (twitter) and mydotcom@gmail are essentials.<p>Of course this has to do with what I'll be launching, but off the top of your head:  what accounts are crucial to own?
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catone
All of them. Or, more precisely, anywhere you either:

1\. may want to some day communicate officially with users, or,

2\. wouldn't want someone else impersonating you

Check out the list at <http://www.usernamecheck.com/> (also handy for checking
them) and then start registering. :)

I wrote about social media cybersquatting in a blog post in October. Might be
interesting to read about the experience the company I work for had:
[http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/31/do-you-own-your-
so...](http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/31/do-you-own-your-social-media-
identity/)

(Short story: someone else has their natural Twitter account -- @companyname
-- and they were forced to use the somewhat clumsier @companynamedotcom
instead)

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sam_in_nyc
Thanks a lot... this is just what I was looking for.

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martian
I would suspect that you would want to pay attention to where your users are.
If you're a Web 2.0 social network site, then Twitter is probably essential
since most of your users would likely be using Twitter as well. Same things
goes for Delicious. If you're in the US, then look into getting a presence on
Facebook or MySpace (MySpace especially if you're working with music). If
you're somewhere overseas, then Orkut may be worth a look. If you're a design
firm, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a Flickr account.

The answer to this question seems to depend on where your users hang out. If
they hang out on the web, then be on the web. If they hang out at trade shows,
then go to trade shows.

(Sam_in_nyc, I read your profile so know that not all of this applies directly
to your situation, but maybe it's useful for thinking about the more general
case...?)

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RobGR
Every new facebook, myspace, webmail, etc creates another namespace. It's not
necessary to have your name in all of them, and can be a bit of distraction to
focus on that.

I second the recommendations of gmail and twitter, although I don't use
twitter. If you are thinking of having an SMS interface, especially if you
want to beta test that without much infrastructure investment, you might want
to also look into www.textmarks.com.

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sh1mmer
You should think about registering a trademark if possible. This means it's
easy in the long run. If you have a trademark you can have various services
reclaim them for you.

That said, twitter, gmail, yahoo, some tech news sites, digg, reddit, etc are
all probably worth doing.

You might also consider adding a getsatisfaction.com account.

------
Zev
Why not just secure _all_ of the domains?

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sam_in_nyc
Quite obviously because there are so many.

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Zev
I was thinking about using something along the lines of 1Password (on mac, at
least) and having an autogenerated random password for everything. Not much
effort beyond the initial setup and changing the passwords.

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sam_in_nyc
...I'm surprised by the lack of input.

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pclark
why?

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vaksel
just to clarify...do you mean YourBusinessName@gmail.com?

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sam_in_nyc
Exactly. Updated post to clarify.

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sarvesh
Twitter I understand. Why secure youdomain@gmail I don't. Also if you are
looking for email solution for your domain there is always google apps.

~~~
RK
You can have Google host your mail with Apps (for free for basic Gmail level
email). And later if you decide you hate Google/Gmail or the next Gmail comes
along, you can always switch, but keep your same addresses...

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bandushrew
No offence intended, but I think the utter irrelevance of this question has
taken everyone a little by surprise.

I can kind of see why you are thinking about it, but ultimately this question
is entirely unimportant in the great realm of Things That Will Help You
Succeed.

