Find Your Username…

The KnowEm does one thing: check the availability of usernames. Let’s find out why this is useful.

First though, we need to figure out what username you should select. You want something that is going to be memorable, pertains to you, and is likely not already taken. How about some examples?

• Memorable – If you decide your username is going to be zakzorbindow182394, it probably isn’t going to be taken by anyone. It also is going to be next to impossible to remember for your friends and acquaintances who may want to look your username on what a given social network. For my username, I choose ‘thedigitante’. It is memorable because I own the site called The Digitante.
• Pertains to you – Once again, zakzorbindow192394 is very unique, but it also doesn’t pertain to you. The simplest thing to do is attempt to get your name or name and birthdate. For formal things, I use my full name, including middle initial. I am somewhat on the fence about other things pertaining to you: if you like baseball, should you choose ‘baseballguy1090′? It’s kind of up to you.
• Available – Sorry Bob. ‘Bob’ is already taken at every site ever in the history of the world. Might want to get a little more creative than that.

Once you have settled on a decent username, you can then head to the KnowEm website. Once there, you just type your desired username in the box and hit the big, orange ‘Check it’ button.

Once you submit the username, it will search a number of categories including blogging (WordPress), community (Facebook), and music (Pandora), just to name a few. All in all, they claim to have over 350 sites available to check.

If you don’t feel like registering all these domain names yourself, you can pay KnowEm $99 to register 150 of the names for you. For the average person, this is probably major overkill.

Any other uses?

Yes, actually. I’ve been using the same username on my personal accounts for years. I decided to go through and see where that username was taken. As it turned out, there was a site on there that I had not been to in an eternity and I even went back to the site and checked it out. They’ve made a number of improvements since I was last there in 2000.

Additionally, each site has a little pop up description that tells you what the site does. KnowEm could also be a good resource to find sites, other than your usual, that are interesting.

Ever used KnowEm or a similar site? Got any other tips for picking a username? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

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