The easiest way to pick your Twitter name is just to use your real name. But the catch is someone might already be using it. Like if you are John Smith your real name probably isn’t going to work.

But still, there may be some combo of intials and your name that may work. A prefix or suffix might help. You could be TheJohn Smith. Maybe you have an online “handle” you’ve used for years.

Maybe it can be your company name. Maybe it could be JohnFitnessGuy, or PhotoJohn or whatever it is you like to do or that you want to associate your profile with. The main idea is to make it memorable.

You’ve got 15 characters for your Twitter user name and you can associate your real name of up to 20 characters along with it.

Another thing to think about is that you should be transparent across all the social networks you are hooked into now or in the future. So if you already have a myspace, facebook, youtube, or other popular social networking site username, use that at Twitter if at all possible.

And if you pick a name you end up not liking, down the road there is a way to change it. An if you think you are going to need more than one name, now is the time. Twitter names are going to disappear just as eBay user names and short keyword and personal name domains have.

Jump over to Twitter right now and get your unique username reserved. If you’re already on twitter, why not follow me on twitter?

Tags: Twitter Names
Categories: Getting Started

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Getting Started. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.