Ask HN: Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure?

[sam_in_nyc]

I'm going to launching a couple of things and want to be sure I get the right accounts set up for these .com's.

I'm thinking: @mydotcom (twitter) and mydotcom@gmail are essentials.

Of course this has to do with what I'll be launching, but off the top of your head: what accounts are crucial to own?

[catone]

All of them. Or, more precisely, anywhere you either:

1. may want to some day communicate officially with users, or,

2. wouldn't want someone else impersonating you

Check out the list at http://www.usernamecheck.com/ (also handy for checking them) and then start registering. :)

I wrote about social media cybersquatting in a blog post in October. Might be interesting to read about the experience the company I work for had: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/31/do-you-own-your-so...

(Short story: someone else has their natural Twitter account -- @companyname -- and they were forced to use the somewhat clumsier @companynamedotcom instead)

[sam_in_nyc]

Thanks a lot... this is just what I was looking for.

[martian]

I would suspect that you would want to pay attention to where your users are. If you're a Web 2.0 social network site, then Twitter is probably essential since most of your users would likely be using Twitter as well. Same things goes for Delicious. If you're in the US, then look into getting a presence on Facebook or MySpace (MySpace especially if you're working with music). If you're somewhere overseas, then Orkut may be worth a look. If you're a design firm, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a Flickr account.

The answer to this question seems to depend on where your users hang out. If they hang out on the web, then be on the web. If they hang out at trade shows, then go to trade shows.

(Sam_in_nyc, I read your profile so know that not all of this applies directly to your situation, but maybe it's useful for thinking about the more general case...?)

[RobGR]

Every new facebook, myspace, webmail, etc creates another namespace. It's not necessary to have your name in all of them, and can be a bit of distraction to focus on that.

I second the recommendations of gmail and twitter, although I don't use twitter. If you are thinking of having an SMS interface, especially if you want to beta test that without much infrastructure investment, you might want to also look into www.textmarks.com.

[sh1mmer]

You should think about registering a trademark if possible. This means it's easy in the long run. If you have a trademark you can have various services reclaim them for you.

That said, twitter, gmail, yahoo, some tech news sites, digg, reddit, etc are all probably worth doing.

You might also consider adding a getsatisfaction.com account.

[Zev]

Why not just secure all of the domains?

[sam_in_nyc]

Quite obviously because there are so many.

[sam_in_nyc]

...I'm surprised by the lack of input.

[pclark]

why?

[vaksel]

just to clarify...do you mean [email protected]?

[sam_in_nyc]

Exactly. Updated post to clarify.

[bandushrew]

No offence intended, but I think the utter irrelevance of this question has taken everyone a little by surprise.

I can kind of see why you are thinking about it, but ultimately this question is entirely unimportant in the great realm of Things That Will Help You Succeed.