[NackerHughes]

Any time you want to sign up for any "open social" platform, you have to rush to claim your domain name. If someone else got there first, too bad. And that domain name applies to every app using this protocol. So no chance to claim it on another app, ever.

So what, exactly, is the difference between this and internet handles? In fact, isn't this worse?

[Squeeze2664]

I suppose the difference is that you only have to rush to claim your domain name (the DNS kind) once and then you get to use it for all "open social" platforms rather than doing that for your username on each platform.

[quasigod]

What do you mean every time? You only need one. Plus theres loads of TLDs for different people to have similar names.