We’ve all been there. You sign in to some web site to leave a comment, and you type your name into the “username” box and you get that annoying message saying “username is not available.” You then get a series of suggested alternates, which for me is always something like justinlocke123.
Then there’s the problem of wanting to find an old friend from high school on facebook, and their name is Jim Johnson. You type their name in the search window, and you get 80,000 results, none of which is the person you’re looking for.
Bill Krazzalowski, an expert in search engine optimization, is trying to change all that. I recently sat down with him for an interview.
JL: So Bill, we all know the problem. How can we solve it?
BK: Well it is a big problem, and it’s getting bigger. In the pre-Internet/pre-global connectivity era, you could be named Suzy Smith or Debbie Jones, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Nowadays, that’s like not having any name at all.
JL: I see your point. So what do we do?
BK: What my company is doing is offering a “unique name registry” service. When your child is born, for a nominal fee, we will generate a unique name for your kid.
JL: Well that’s great, but does that guarantee that no one else will give their kid that same name later on?
BK: Well, no, they can always do that, but what we do is, we have a service where within an hour of cutting the cord, your child’s unique new name is automatically converted to being his or her username on twitter, facebook, linkedin, and gmail. That’s pretty much the same as trademarking it.
JL: Wow, that sounds great. How are sales going?
BK: Well, I admit it’s not catching on as fast as we had hoped. One couple objected to our software naming their daughter “Buzlstrmz98” . . . But we’re working on that. And even more importantly. some new legislation requiring everyone to do this is about to really give us a shot in the arm. It has to do with national security.
JL: National security?
BK: Yes. You see, various members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have figured out that it’s awfully easy for them to be electronically tracked when they have names like “Moustaffa Mizzulla Achmadinijad.” All the FBI has to do is set up a little “Google alert” and they can track their movements night and day with virtually no effort. In fact, finding Osama Bin Laden all began with him leaving a snarky comment as “Osama3857” on a Robert Reich column in the Huffington Post. So now, a lot of them are getting wise and are changing their names to “Bill Johnson” and “Robert Smith.” With names like that, there’s no way we can keep them off the no-fly lists, and they become virtually invisible online. There is now immense pressure on the international community to require everyone in the world to have a unique user ID. We are poised and ready to take advantage of that new market opportunity.
© Justin Locke
Justin Locke would make a great speaker for your next event!
