
We Need a New Username System - adamotaku
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/02/we-need-a-new-username-system/
======
minimaxir
Blizzard's Battle.net has an interesting naming system which a few others have
adapted.

You can pick any username you want. But the username is appended with a pound
sign and a 4 digit number. (for example, my Battletag is minimaxir#1667)

Everyone wins the branding wars. Presumably, there aren't 10,000 people who
want the same name.

~~~
odinduty
And what's the practical difference between minimaxir#1667 and minimaxir1667,
other than there's no "minimaxir" with no numbers?

~~~
minimaxir
Numbers _are_ allowed in the username
([https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/700007](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/700007))
so using a pound as a delimiter is necessary to separate numbers at the end of
a Battletag and the unique identifier.

------
perfectfire
Like all things in life the username scarcity problem can be solved with
gamification. Initially all users are assigned a unique number as their
username. By reaching various predefined goals users can earn new characters
to use in their username. For simplicity's sake I'll restrict my examples to
ASCII characters. Made your first 20 comments? You've earned a random
character. It'll be like opening a pack of Magic cards. Will you get a highly
desirable 'e' or much less useful 'Z'? Created your first 3 posts? Get another
random character!

You'll be able to trade your characters with other users. You need a 'Y' to
form "YoloSwaggins", so you trade your desirable 'e' for a 'Y' and a 'g' (you
need 2 'g's). You can also sell characters you have no need of or buy ones
that you want, all through the website's online marketplace that takes a
modest cut for themselves of course.

You can't just change your username at any time though. Each character change
requires a special character change token that has a small chance of dropping
with each achievement. Or you can buy character change tokens in packs of 3
from the online shop.

~~~
mixedCase
Have you considered that this introduces a huge amount of complexity to a
practically trivial issue?

------
tonytamps
Slow day on HN I guess?

Instagram isn't one of the offenders, like you say. Usernames can be changed
at will and logins are done through email.

I regularly change my username to a beer-pun when I've had enough of the
current one.

I also don't really like your gamification grand plan. Names are too common
for that to work. You'd be in the same position you were in before with a name
like "Adam" because you'd be competing with "Adam Sandler" for example and
he'll whoop your ass on "most pins/tweets/likes/friends/wins".

~~~
crazygringo
But that's exactly the point -- it makes a lot more sense for someone like
"Adam Sandler" to have "Adam", rather than someone less popular. So it's not
at all the position you were in before -- this is the whole improvement!

~~~
thebaer
What if there's a more popular Adam than Adam Sandler? And does this mean I
need to reserve the name "Adam" on my service, so that one day when Adam
Sandler comes along, he'll be able to get the name I assumed he wants?

------
sparkie
A "username" should be a uuid. The user should be able to put a string of
their chosing next to it (an alias, real name, etc), and a service like
gravatar can be used to distinguish between users who have the same string.

~~~
kleer001
Right? Lets look at mature-er systems like Linked-In. There's plenty of "John
Smith" or "Jane Kim", but they're all represented as different people. No
stress, ugh.

~~~
minimaxir
LinkedIn allows users to choose a username for a unique link to their profile
(e.g. [https://linkedin.com/in/minimaxir](https://linkedin.com/in/minimaxir)
), which is subject to the same rules as normal usernames.

~~~
kleer001
True. And that username is not in the main pipe for searching.

------
riffic
Each service is the sole owner of their own namespace.

If you want to solve this, go distributed and own your own namespace.

Instead of ${walledgarden}, run your own GNU social instance and federate.

------
thebaer
The "minimum length" idea is sort of interesting. But is this _really_ an
issue? Many early Twitter users with one-letter names still use the service.
Not all early adopters want a "one night stand" with your product -- many want
to _adopt it early_. Also names aren't universally unique, and this often
causes people to get more creative with their handles, which I think is a good
thing.

I've been building a no-sign-up product, and now I'm getting ready to launch
accounts. So recently I let existing users reserve their usernames in exchange
for some feedback on the product thus far. I got some great feedback, and now
they get an awesome permanent URL on the web. They deserve it, because without
the early adopters, there are no _late_ adopters.

------
ams6110
I recently bought a domain name under one of the newer TLDs. I hadn't really
paid much attention to how these work, but the registry is Donuts and they
seem to be using some kind of market-based pricing scheme. As a result the
names I wanted were available on namecheap.com, they cost significantly more
than what a .com or .org would have cost, but were not unaffordable. That
seems to be working to diminish squatters, since it's too expensive to buy a
bunch of names and then hope you can resell them.

------
viperscape
I feel like icq got this right, no one had a name, just an identifier of n
digits. If we all used some central service that provides ids, user profiles
could be linked between services.

~~~
prebrov
Because numbers are impersonal and the shorter and "nicer" they are, the
easier they are to remember, market for short ICQ numbers was huge and
phishing and hacking for these went rampant.

It was a terrible system, the worst, really.

Usernames aren't a problem, discoverability is. Vanity IDs aren't a problem as
well, but an opportunity and they are being sold either for money (registered
trademarks, "lucky" phone numbers, short or custom license plates) or
engagement (Facebook's vanity URLs for pages).

Vanity id shouldn't affect discoverability and it really doesn't these days.
Do Nimble CRM's customers have confusion by @nimble on Pinterest being taken
by the Author? Don't think so. pornhub.com ha more traffic than sex.com and
doesn't seem to be bothered.

------
jack9
All the solutions he mentions (including the Blizzard system) is just a more
complicated first-come-first-claimed. Gamification to get a shorter name, is
the same system with a slightly more complicated process of the registration
after-first-registration. Blizzards idea that you always see the username and
not the uid identifier is probably as human-friendly as it can get.

------
cjbprime
It's surprising that the solution of simply sharing usernames between websites
wasn't mentioned, so that everyone only has to get their preferred username
once -- something like [https://onename.com/](https://onename.com/).

~~~
CM30
And if different sites have different people with the same username?

For example, on various gaming sites I use, there are different longstanding
members with the username 'Mario'. So who gets it with that sort of system?

How about two companies with the same name in different fields? Apple computer
vs Apple records?

~~~
cjbprime
There'd be conflict over usernames, but the conflict would only happen once
ever, instead of happening once on every new site someone wants to sign up on.

------
marssaxman
"First-come, first-served originated with domain name registrations" \- what!?
That's not even wrong, so far as I can tell - it is an answer for some
entirely different question. Perhaps this author does not understand that
usernames existed long before the Internet did?

------
tclmeelmo
The proposed policy of shorter username requires more investment (time and
activity) strikes me as being somewhat like the amateur radio handle scheme:
the shorter (and more desirable, especially for morse code) handles require a
higher license class.

------
belovedeagle
Why would I take advice on naming from someone who wrote (twice!) that names
are subject to copyright? And even if I did, why would I take legal advice
from this person?!

