On Saturday, June 13th at 12:01 am, Facebook allowed people to create a unique username for their accounts. This is very similar to what many other social networking sites have done, i.e. Flickr, myspace, etc. Facebook up to this point required that you supply a real name as the account identifier, so searching for a singular persona like "Ken Dirkin" worked like a charm, but finding your friend "John Smith" was difficult at best. Seems like a great idea.
I was excited on Saturday morning when I logged into Facebook and found the link to assign myself a username. It provided me with several options, like "ken.dirkin" and the singular "dirkin". I immediately chose "dirkin", to align with my current "dirkin.com" and Flickr "photos/dirkin" motif. As I pressed ok button I suddenly realized how selfish I was being. I have a hundred family members with the last name "Dirkin" that I have robbed of the privilege. How am I to be the singular "Dirkin" on Facebook when my "Related" app points out that I am but one of thirty or so people.
It may be the fact that I was called "Dirkin" for a large portion of my life, or the disconnectedness I have with my extended family who live in New Jersey, but in reality it is downright selfishness. I have become brand identity selfish. I've been going around the web scarfing up "Dirkin" resources like a domain squatter and depriving my family the resource.
This has changed my opinion greatly of how I'll handle the valuable (and shared) brand of "dirkin" from now on. It has even got me thinking that I should use dirkin.com for something more useful across my family tree. My interest lies now in trying to create a Wordpress Multi-User site that will allow my family to create "*.dirkin.com" Wordpress blogs for free as well as provide free "@dirkin.com" email addresses. To offer it as a community service to my extended family who time and time again have support me...
That may, just may, make up for how selfish I've been.
Damn you Facebook.