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You Don’t Own Your Data on Social Networks

Posted on April 9, 2009 by jessestay

I get asked often by clients, reporters and media folk and others about Facebook’s recent Terms of Service updates, essentially saying they own their users data and have a right to do as they wish with their data. They’ve turned around on that and will be releasing newly revised Terms soon, but at least they’re being honest about it. The thing is, any service on the internet you belong to, which includes Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, even Gmail, and more, owns your data. It’s their right to change their Terms for their users any time they want, and the only choice you’ll have at that point is to leave the service, or continue on, recognizing what you already knew – that what you’ve stored on their service is theirs to own forever. I think people have come to accept that – they just get all up in arms when it’s thrown in their face.

The thing is, as a brand, you can’t afford for this to happen. Owning, and losing rights to your data can make or break your business. People take risks to be able to take shortcuts and survive by joining such services, and frankly, it’s important to still have a presence on these services because people are talking about your brand and you could be missing out on that conversation. But can you really trust your content on such services? What if Twitter, or Google, or FriendFeed were to pull a Facebook and with the drop of a hat own all your previous data. They are within right to do so – you gave them that right when you signed up for their service.

The Social Web Needs More Open Protocols

We were discussing on FriendFeed today how the new FriendFeed beta, with its real-time nature, is a lot like IRC, and enables people to chat, in a completely new way, in real time. The thing is, it’s not at all like IRC. IRC is an open protocol. It’s software businesses can own, modify, and change to their hearts content. They can wrap their brand around it. With IRC a business has the ability to own the community that subsides within the environment they set up, on their own servers.

Not FriendFeed, or even Twitter enable this capability, which is why if they don’t adapt in the future things will change. Facebook is attempting to address this with their Connect product, and that’s a step in the right direction. Facebook also provides quite a bit of their underlying developer platform code, as open source, freely and openly to the community, also a step in the right direction, but they can always do more.

Keep in mind that this is all about owning your own community. Can Guy Kawasaki set his own rules about what is, and isn’t spammy? Can Leo Laporte provide a Geek-friendly environment for his TWIT Army? Can ESPN provide a sports-enthusiast friendly environment for Football fans, and properly advertise and provide things, in their own way, that those fans would appreciate? You can’t do this on any of the networks right now (with the exception of Facebook Connect).

Laconi.ca is headed in the right direction on this. As is Automattic, and SixApart. They all have their own major services, but all of their services enable you to focus on owning your own community. And even if you don’t have enough control, they provide you the source code to give you the control you need, should you need it. This is the future!

Why does this matter to the end-user?

You may think, well, I’m not a business. I’m just a casual user so this doesn’t matter to me. I’m willing to bet if you’re an Athletics fan, or a Boston Red Sox fan, or a 49ers fan, or a Mom, or even a Dad, that you put much more interest in those things than you do the brand name Twitter or FriendFeed or Facebook. Those things are your real life! Now imagine if those brands started to give you a way you could communicate with like-minded individuals, and what if different brands could talk with each other? This is one reason Facebook is going to succeed, and one reason Laconi.ca is going to succeed, because I can chat in the environment I want, and my friends all still get to hear me! As an end user, and especially a brand targeting that end user, that’s powerful!

This is why TodaysMama Connect is seeing great participation in their new Connect community for Moms. Now, with their service, Moms can connect with each other without having to sift through the massive data mine of Twitter. At the same time, TodaysMama gets to own and control the community in a way that works well for Moms and is inviting for them, while maintaining their brand image. You see the same with Leo Laporte’s TWIT army, and I’m already talking to several other major brands that are considering the same.

How do you control your data?

Will the future be full of everyone creating their own communities of “followers”, competing for who visits their site and embraces the community? It’s possible, but that’s far down the road. We need more open standards. The Twitters, the FriendFeeds, and the Facebooks all need to be providing and leading these open standards and serving instead of being data hoards, becoming network Connectors, providing ways to connect multiple smaller networks with each other. They need to be the directories and the places where people can go to find each community. They need to be the search, and the stream of the “brand-owned” data, and providing as many ways as possible for those brands to completely own and customize the experience for their own communities. Their role is the glue of the Open Web.

Let’s truly make these services the IRC of the Social Web. Thank you, Laconi.ca and Automattic, and SixApart for leading the way.

Photo Courtesy Eric Kilby

Twitter, One Year Later and Nothing Has Changed

Posted on April 9, 2009 by jessestay

“Twitter’s all about the real time.” That’s what Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, said in this interview Scoble did with me sitting in the background almost 1 whole year ago. As I sit here, my Twitter is inconsistently providing updates, they have specifically told their users some updates will just be missing over the next little bit, and I’ve been waiting on CoTweet, my preferred client, for hours to provide me new updates. No, I don’t blame CoTweet – after all, my own service, SocialToo has also been suffering from these delays and slowness issues due to some sort of “architectural changes” they are making on the back-end. Twitter’s slow, follower and following numbers are off, apps are hitting rate limits when they shouldn’t normally be, caching issues are everywhere. We’re at Twitter’s mercy, and it’s far from real time!

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Rewind back one year. I recommend watching the above video if you have 15 minutes. I’m hearing the same things today that I heard one year ago in that room, and I’m still just as frustrated as I was an entire year ago. I’ve been strung along and I’m not happy, as a user, and especially as a developer.

A full year ago Twitter was working on their architecture, dealing with scalability issues in times of “massive growth”, and that never, ever stabilized. In fact I think the media has actually kind of gotten used to it – you rarely hear frustrations today like you did back then when nothing has really changed! At this point I’m beginning to think it will never stabilize – I’m scared as both a business owner who writes software on top of the service (I should have heeded my own warning half a year ago), and I’m scared as a user, and someone who has brought hundreds, if not thousands to try out the service that my reputation may be tarnished.

I’m talking with a lot of media entities and reporters about Twitter lately and frankly, I’m not sure what to tell them any more. Do I keep pushing them to try out Twitter? Do I just be brutally honest that this is just what Twitter is and people should just be prepared to get used to it? Or do I tell them it’s not worth leaving Facebook and their existing networks there to pursue? After all, Twitter themselves barely even use their own service. When was the last time you saw them respond to a complaint from someone about Twitter, on Twitter? Does anyone really know where to go on Twitter for Twitter support? Even in the video above I’m referred back to the developer mailing lists, not Twitter – nothing has changed. When at the same time I can always contact @comcastcares, or @scottmonty, or @RichardAtDell and get prime support from some of Twitter’s biggest users.

I’m seeing hundreds, if not thousands of people begin to game the system of Twitter. People are using services all around Twitter, and I’ll admit some are even using mine, to gain massive followings, empty followings, just to accrue followers with no relationship underneath that number. I’m beginning to feel that most of my followers are just dry numbers because of that – Twitter is seriously losing its value for me as a user.

Evan and Biz, it’s been a year already – I’m your biggest fan. Because of that I’m also your biggest critic, and I’d really like to see some improvement! At what point can we expect to see brighter skies and greener pastures on Twitter, or will it continue to be “we wish we could give you a time frame, but it could be months down the road” like you said a whole year ago? Just be frank with us – be honest. Let us know what to expect. Communicate to both your users and your developers in a way we can all enter this knowing what we’re going to get, because frankly I have no idea what to expect from the service any more.

Maybe it’s about time Twitter starts looking to sell. There are many businesses quite large enough to handle the problems Twitter is experiencing right now, and even prepare for 2 years down the road. There are businesses that have experienced this growth and know how to get it in order quick. Something’s not right at Twitter – it hasn’t been right for over a year now, and maybe it’s time to fix it.

Forgive my venting – as a developer I’m frustrated and I needed to get this out. In the meantime I’m going to go write some more code. While Twitter’s down you can find me on FriendFeed where it’s nice and green and pretty, oh, and real time!

TodaysMama Launches a Laconi.ca Instance That Works

Posted on March 28, 2009 by jessestay

As long-time readers of my blog know, I am a very strong proponent of self-hosted, branded micro-blogging communities. Imagine, for instance, if ESPN were to create a Twitter-like site, just for sports enthusiasts (call me!). People are known for talking their minds on Twitter, but when someone mentions what they ate for lunch, they go nuts! How about a Subway-branded micro-blogging community for food-lovers? Another example I have used is a community, solely for Moms to communicate and share with other Moms. That’s why I was excited when Rachael Herrscher, CEO of TodaysMama, sat down with me looking for new ways to build community around their brand. What we came up with is something I’ll admit blew me away when I saw the final version. Yesterday they launched the live version of it, TodaysMama Connect for the world to see.

TodaysMama Connect – What it Is

TodaysMama Connect, put quite simply, is “Twitter, for Moms” (as I call it). They’ve taken a simple open source Microblogging platform, Laconi.ca, and have made it beautiful, something your Mom could use. The site has simple microblogging functionality, enabling users to post, in short burst, what they’re doing at the moment or what they’re thinking, while at the same time communicate with each other via @replies or direct message functionality.

In addition, the site uses a feature of Laconi.ca, groups, to allow groups of people, such as what we’re seeing through the #GNO (Girls Night Out – takes place every Tuesday night) “group” on Twitter, to truly communicate as a group without disrupting the flow of the site. In fact, the very large #GNO movement which makes Twitter trending terms every Tuesday has also created a group on TodaysMama Connect, and the group is continuing what they started over on Twitter, in the more Mom-focused environment. When users send !groupname and their message, the message goes out to only those who have joined the group on TodaysMama Connect. There are already hundreds of groups to join, top groups including “Toddler”, and “Office”, and “Potty”.

The site integrates fully with Twitter, so you can use Twitter directly from the site itself, importing your current Twitter stream into TodaysMama Connect, and also sending your updates from TodaysMama Connect out to Twitter. In addition, as a Laconi.ca instance supporting the OpenMicroBlogging (OMB) standard, the site works fully with clients such as Twhirl, which support Laconi.ca and OMB. I even got it to work on my iPhone with the LaTwit app (using http://todaysmama.com/connect/api as the API URL). You can get it to work in Twhirl using username@todaysmama.com/connect as your username.

Even if you’re not a techy and prefer a nice, plain, web interface, the UI is comfortable enough any Mom would enjoy using. The site supports normal login/registration, or if you have an OpenID you can login/register via that means as well. Registration was extremely easy. There is lots of help documentation, and if you get stuck, you can always pose your question, and @todaysmamastaff is listening (as is the CEO, @todaysmama).

The Power of Micro-Branded Communities

I’ve said this time and time again, and I’ll keep saying it. The only way Twitter will survive is if they open up by allowing other communities to communicate and build “Twitter” in their own environments. This is “Forums 2.0”, and Twitter just so happens to have the largest master Forum site on the internet right now. That won’t last forever if they keep their closed environment.

Businesses want their customers interacting in their own brand environments. Many have strict rules, requiring they host the content and do it under their own umbrella. Twitter can’t do that right now, and will never fully do that if they don’t open up.

At the same time, Twitter is a mess of mixed niches, all on the same platform. It’s very difficult as a brand to pinpoint users devoted and interested in a single type of product. It’s difficult to identify demographics. What TodaysMama is doing is enabling brands to now have a specific demographic of people they can target and share information with. Rachael Herrscher, the CEO, even shared an example of a local Zoo being able to share local deals to the Moms in the area. Businesses want this – and this is the perfect social environment to do it in. They now have the power to interact with one of the most powerful demographics on the internet – Moms.

The Future of Microblogging

This is only the start. What Laconi.ca and OMB allow users to do is connect with people, across platforms, in ways they weren’t able to do before. For instance, if someone were to create an OMB-compatible site for Dads, now my wife would be able to follow me as I interact with other Dads on the Dad-related site, and she would never have to leave TodaysMama Connect.

Evan Prodromau, the author and maintainer of Laconi.ca is offering services to help large brands set up and maintain these instances. From my conversations with Rachael, he was there the entire way to help with the technicalities of the TodaysMama Connect set up. Businesses like this type of professional service and guarantee. Large Brands will embrace this.

I know of several other large brands also interested in such a set up, and many don’t even know this is possible yet. Dave Winer is also looking to push this concept, as is Steve Gillmor and others. Twitter is a powerful force, but it has a long way to go before it can embrace every niche out there. I really don’t think people are as devoted to the “Twitter” brand as we think they are. They are devoted to “NASCAR”, and they are devoted to “ESPN”, just as they are to being a Mom, or being a Dad, and the products and services surrounding those. Twitter has led the way, but it’s time to break out of the mold.

If you’re a Mom, have a Mom, or are married to a Mom, I highly suggest you try out TodaysMama Connect. We are already seeing the site take off and I’m amazed by the many conversations I’m already seeing there. I think for the first time I may actually get to see my Mom, or my wife, truly microblogging and interacting with others via such a service. I only wish I could hear them from Twitter now. That won’t happen until Twitter opens up.

You can sign up for TodaysMama Connect at http://todaysmama.com/connect.

The Potential for Facebook Search Kicks Twitter’s Butt

Posted on March 22, 2009 by jessestay

Rob Diana recently did a post suggesting Facebook, rather than Twitter, was the real goldmine for data. I, as I’ve inferred before on LouisGray.com, wholeheartedly agree with that notion, and in fact, Facebook is already showing the potential for this with their Lexicon product. While not yet as public as Twitter search, right now anyone can see top trending keywords and topics, very similar to Twitter search, via the URL http://facebook.com/lexicon. Better yet, Facebook has revealed where they are going with it via their new version of the trends tool at http://facebook.com/lexicon/new.

From the new Lexicon you can pick any trending topic, see the number of users talking about those topics on a given timeline. Facebook goes further though, providing demographic data. For instance, for the term, “baseball”, you can find out how many females vs. males are talking about baseball. Under a Demographics category, you can also break it down by age, or country.

Associations

In addition to demographical information, you can pull out various statistics about what people are saying about a particular topic. Under the “Associations” category, you can get a graphical breakdown of what the most popular word associations with the topic are. Popular associations for the word, “baseball” were “high school”, “college”, “coach”, to name a few.

Sentiment

I found this one quite interesting. Facebook has found some way to determine the sentiment of users when mentioning various search terms. For instance, for “baseball”, you can determine the percentage of users speaking positively of baseball, and the percentage of users speaking negatively. They go further though, allowing you to compare the sentiment of one search term over another.

Pulse

Facebook will also do some biographical checking for you as well. It looks at each search term, and will determine what other common keywords are in users’ profiles related to those search terms, and what words are most popular when users are mentioning the term. For “baseball”, users tended to have words such as “sports”, “music”, “football”, and “reading”, revealing a little information about those fanatical about baseball.

Geography

Lastly, users can see how a particular search term fares geographically. “baseball” is very popular in California. Facebook provides a map, color-coding based on percent of users talking about the particular term. I can’t help but wonder if all search results are biased towards California however since that is one of the most populous states in terms of Facebook use.

The Potential for Facebook vs. Twitter

I think Facebook has shown through this Lexicon that they have the potential to be much more useful than Twitter in terms of search and data mining potential. Because Facebook has more detailed profile data, and a significantly larger user base to read from, the potentials for useful data are so much greater, and are already proving so via this Lexicon. If Facebook starts to provide APIs around this search data, along with the publicly available user status updates and profile data, they will be a very serious force to reckon with, that I think, regardless of the mass funding Twitter has, will be extremely tough to compete with.

If you’re currently writing apps for Twitter, you should sincerely consider starting to learn Facebook.

Making Auto-Follow a Little Easier by Removing the DMs

Posted on February 28, 2009 by jessestay

As of today on my service SocialToo, we’re taking a stand and removing the ability to auto-dm your followers. This service, as it grew, was getting out of hand, very impersonable, and people were just ignoring them. It was a tough decision due to the number of users using the service, but I think making this decision is the right thing to do. In the end this makes the other services we provide, such as auto-follow, more productive. I’m trying to think of other less-spammy and more personal alternatives down the road, however.

To replace auto-DMs, we’re now blocking DMs from any service we’re able to that do provide the auto-DM service. In addition, I’ll be working on some new features in the near future to auto-unfollow users we detect auto-DM-like behavior from for you. Let’s end this robot-like practice once and for all. I’m taking the reigns on this one.

My Hiatus From RSS – Is RSS Really Necessary?

Posted on February 26, 2009 by jessestay

Recently, I have become increasingly aware of my dependance on RSS for news and information. Like Louis Gray, I am a data sponge. I like new news, when it happens – I really think I should have majored in Journalism for that reason. Because of that dependance on the news, I have, over the years, subscribed to enough RSS to constitute thousands of news items in my feeds that I read daily. And yes, while some I skim, I go through each and every one of them.

At the same time I’m beginning to realize the amount of time it involves to stay so updated on the news. While I have become increasingly good at using my “J” and “K” keys in Google Reader, I find my dependance on the news constantly drawing me back to Google Reader, in almost an addictive manner throughout the day.

You see, going through my news I’ve come to realize recently that much of the news I get is simply entertainment. Much of it is repeated, and much of it, while very interesting, simply isn’t necessary to enhancing my business, SocialToo, improving my Consulting knowledge or improving me as a person in any way. I discussed this recently with my friend, Jeremiah Owyang, and he gave me some insight into how he gets his news.

Jeremiah is a Senior Analyst at Forrester, and perhaps one of their most vocal (if not the most vocal) employees, with one of the top blogs on the internet on Web strategy, Social Media, and Web 2.0-related topics. He knows his stuff, and is very up-to-date on what’s current and what’s happening in early-adopter, as well as Enterprise technologies. In discussing my dilemma with him, Jeremiah revealed to me that he doesn’t use RSS. He relies solely on FriendFeed Friend Lists, Google E-mail alerts, and what people tell him on Twitter. From that he hasn’t missed anything he needed to know, and has remained an expert in his related field of expertise. I was amazed that he was able to do this without RSS.

I decided to give this a try. In fact, I’m going to use a religious holiday as an excuse to try it. Yesterday at noon was the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday). Admittedly, I’m not Catholic (although I do run one of the largest organized groups of Catholics through my We’re Catholic App, at 70,000 users), but I love the concept of Lent. The holiday is based on the fast that Jesus Christ performed for 40 days and 40 nights, in which he was tempted despite his hunger and weakness, and came out triumphant. People around the world give up different items for those 40 days as a method of overcoming weakness and temptation.

For this Lent, I’m going to give up RSS and Google Reader. I’m going to be a weakling and only do it for 1 week, but my attempt is to figure out if I can be more efficient without it than with it. With the advent of Social Media and tools such as Twitter, FriendFeed, and even normal e-mail, I wonder if I can remove this addiction and still be as productive as I used to. Here is how I will do it:

The start – Yesterday at 12pm I closed my Google Reader tab. I haven’t yet re-opened it, and I won’t re-open it until next Wednesday at 12pm. I will declare RSS bankruptcy and delete all remaining RSS at that time.

Google/Twitter/FriendFeed Alerts – I’ve been doing most of these through RSS up until now. I am contemplating the best solution. One option would be to create a FriendFeed Room that imports all my searched terms into one place. Another would be to start sending Google searches to my e-mail, filling up my inbox – not sure I want to do that. I could also set up a TweetDeck or PeopleBrowsr column to search for the terms I need to track. I may do a combination of all of the above.

Getting the News I Want – If there was ever a better reason to be on FriendFeed, this is why you need to do it. Even if you don’t participate, make sure your blog is populating FriendFeed (I would add it to Facebook as well). This will be how I obtain my news. Now, instead of just tracking news, I’ll be tracking Twitter, Blogs, Youtube, and more through a Friends List on FriendFeed. If I was subscribed to your blog before and you’re on FriendFeed, I’m now tracking your blog via that method. I’ll be “media snacking”, as Robert Scoble calls it, and IMO, this is the future of news discovery, and takes much less time. Add me on FriendFeed if you want me to discover your content as well.

Twitter – If there’s anything you think I should read, @reply me on Twitter. I track things there as well, but that will guarantee I read it, and some times ReTweet it.

Sharing – One thing I love most about Google Reader is my ability to share items I come across, and even comment on them. This saves me a lot of the need to write a blog post about something someone has already covered. FriendFeed provides a nifty tool you can add as a Bookmarklet in your browser which will add any page you come across to FriendFeed. I’ll be using this religiously moving forward. You can follow my shares in FriendFeed, or on my FriendFeed widget over on the lower-right of this blog.

It’s my hope that I can learn something from this. Fasting, whether it be food or other material items, can teach you what’s most important in life. I did this with Twitter for a few months last year and learned a lot on what Twitter is, and isn’t important for. My hope is I can do the same with FriendFeed. Perhaps this Lent we should all, regardless of religion or faith, figure out something we want to learn about and give up those things we would at other times call a “need”. I think this world would be a much better place if we all did this every so often.

I will post a follow up to what I learned in a week.

Announcing the Twitter Bowl 2009 Results

Posted on February 6, 2009 by jessestay

Today Brian Solis announced the results of the promotion my company, SocialToo did with him, Jeremiah Owyang, Louis Gray, Chris Heuer, and Guy Kawasaki. The promotion was to encourage everyone to prepend their Tweets about the Superbowl ads with #superbowlads, and then vote for their favorite ad on a SocialToo SocialSurvey at the end of the Super Bowl. The results were interesting:

There were a total of 1,534 Tweets during the Superbowl mentioning #superbowlads

563 people voted on the survey

3,151 visited the survey page (showing SocialToo SocialSurveys don’t just cover Twitter)

111 of those visits came from Facebook, 616 directly from Twitter

The top ads were 1. Transformers, 2. Hulu, 3. Career Builder, 4. Pepsi Max, “I’m Good”, 5. Doritos, “Free Doritos”

These stats are vastly different from other nation-wide polls, showing that the Social Media audience is its own niche, with different ideas and opinions

In addition, midway through the Superbowl we asked viewers to share their thoughts on the overall ad experience. The results were consistent with other findings, showing that most viewers only viewed the ads as par or less from past SuperBowls.

Thanks to Brian Solis for leading all this and putting it together and Jeremiah Owyang for the idea. Brian put a lot of work into organizing all this – you can read more of his findings and results, along with a much more in-depth analysis over on his blog.

Looking for a RockStar Facebook or OpenSocial Developer?

Posted on January 20, 2009 by jessestay

SocialToo.com has been a huge success for me so far. Just this last month we have gone from just less than 1,000 users to over 7,000 users, and that number shows no sign of slowing down. We’re starting to monetize the site, via one-time purchases of various services, advertising, and will be adding some premium features very soon. I’m slowly actually starting to monetize a service based on Social Media, and thus far, I’m proving it’s going to work.

However, I’ve just about exhausted my resources financially to continue supporting this on just my own savings alone, and have decided it’s time to find something full or part-time that can supplement SocialToo. I am also looking for financing and investment as an alternate source of income, but in tough economic times I have to put my eggs in multiple baskets to ensure something works out.

So, here’s what I have to offer. If you’re looking for a RockStar Facebook, OpenSocial, Twitter, YouTube, or you name the Social Media platform developer to take your app to the next level, I’m your man. I have a very strong software development background which you can see on my LinkedIn profile. I have written two books on Facebook, one on Facebook Development and FBML for O’Reilly (see those in the upper-right of the blog), and one on Facebook professional growth and marketing. I speak and teach others regularly on the subjects of Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, and related topics. I have a good following on multiple networks and a great platform to build your brand as an employee or consultant for your company. Any such relationship would be announced in full disclosure here and any other place it makes sense to mention the relationship. In addition, I am an entrepreneur at heart, which means I have passion in the products I help build. I love seeing these things grow to become successes!

I can develop software – I wrote SocialToo.com from the ground up, by myself (with thanks to some great advisors). I can market Social Media. I am learning to monetize Social Media. I have a successful business, and have helped businesses based on Social Media become successes. So, if you or your company are looking for someone with my skills, let’s talk. We can talk full time relationships, consulting relationships, temporary relationships. I’d love to help you out. Oh, and international is definitely an option – I speak fluent Thai, some Spanish, and even some Indonesian and am no stranger to learning new languages and cultures!

At the same time, if you know anyone looking for a good investment that will make money in the near future please forward them my way. In either scenario, SocialToo will continue to grow, will continue to be a focus (while if I work full time for you it will be a side-focus), and you can continue to expect to see the same growth you always have as we move forward. At the same time, I’m a hungry entrepreneur.

You can read my LinkedIn profile at http://linkedin.com/in/facebook

My contact info is in the upper-right of this blog.

Please Re-Tweet

Photo courtesy the talented Brian Solis

I Changed My Twitter Username – How You Can Too

Posted on January 8, 2009 by jessestay

For those that follow me on Twitter, be sure to look for me now under the username, “Jesse” (or @Jesse in Twitter speak). If you’re already following me, the transition should have occurred seamlessly, and you shouldn’t have to re-follow me. If you have me in a TweetDeck Group or similar 3rd party app, you may want to update me there. I have created a new account under my old username, “JesseStay“, just in case anyone has anything pointing to that username still. It just sends people back to this account.

You Can Too!

Making the switch was easy! And it serves as some great Google juice for my first name – maybe I can finally achieve my dream of beating Jesse McCartney as the number one spot on Google! To get the name you want, assuming it’s already taken, verify that there haven’t been any updates for over 9 months on the name. Then, send an e-mail to username@twitter.com – you’ll receive a support e-mail back, asking you some more questions. Answer those questions, and wait a few weeks. Assuming someone hasn’t already beaten you to it, you should be set!

Update Your Third Party Sites!

Now that you’ve changed your username, you may want to go back and create the old account, and put a post, pointing it to your new name just in case. Then, be sure to go to sites like SocialToo.com or clients like TweetDeck and update your username there, as many sites will still think you’re under the old username. It will take some work, but if you really, really want that new name, it may just be worth it. Oh, and change your passwords to something strong! If you have a common first name, you will now be one of the first to be targeted in a hacker attack. Good luck!