The Particle Lab a blog by Neutron Creations
Reserve your username
Several web application have launched recently with an invite system where you not only give them an email address to notify you but also reserve your username. Some even go a little further and ask you to connect with Facebook, Twitter etc. The latest one to do so is connect.me, which I signed up for when I had heard about it.
This triggered a brief discussion with a friend about this:
Don't know what connect.me really is, but I'm reserving my username now! http://cxt.me/sKQC8g #connectme
— Marc Roberts (@marcroberts) March 10, 2011
@marcroberts Why?
— Justin Stach (@juter) March 10, 2011
@juter cos I'm a web app whore, and there are other 'marcroberts' out there. So on the off chance it takes off I want that to be me
— Marc Roberts (@marcroberts) March 10, 2011
@marcroberts And you're happy to give them access to your Facebook/Twitter account based on that? Seems a little one-sided to me.
— Justin Stach (@juter) March 10, 2011
@juter it can have access to twitter for now, if it does anything nefarious its gone though. Probably need to explain more via other means
— Marc Roberts (@marcroberts) March 10, 2011
This discussion couldn't really continue on Twitter so has spawned this post.
I am lucky in that my full name is not that common, however I have not been able to get my preferred username of 'marcroberts' on both Facebook and Flickr. This has lead me to try to register with new web application early in order to secure my username, and why I described myself as a "web app whore" (I've also been an active member of Web Apps Stack Exchange site from conception, through its private beta to now so please don't interpret 'whore' as a bad thing!).
But it's not just about reserving a username, here at Neutron Creations we know the pains of launching a web app and so I like to encourage others. If this means signing up my email address, connecting with twitter or facebook then I'm ok with that assuming they don't do anything unwanted. Now obviously I can't know in advance whether they will, and I guess that's a risk I'm willing to take to help and support fellow web application developers.
As long as you haven't given your Twitter/Facebook password to them (and you shouldn't as OAuth should be used for both) you can remove that app from your Facebook and Twitter accounts easily and prevent any further access to your account. Of course this won't remove any data the app has retained, the app itself should provide a way to remove this data or delete/remove your account. There are also term of use with the Twitter/Facebook APIs which specify data retention rules that the app should honour.
There is one golden rule that all web apps that have connections to Facebook/Twitter should never EVER break, they should never post from your account without your explicit permission. Now my first tweet in the conversation may seem like an 'auto-tweet', and in fact if you search twitter for #connectme it seems like connect.me could be breaking this rule, however this was a purely optional step in the signup process (although heavily encouraged) and the text was editable (I did alter my tweet from the standard text).
What are you thoughts on connect.me and this trend of reserving usernames, or encouraging connections with social networks? Drop a comment below or give me a mention on twitter.
More about connect.me
- Connect.me sign-up rush exposes risky behaviour of social networkers
- The story behind the Connect.Me beta invite launch
Marc Roberts is Principal & Co-Founder at Neutron Creations, where he rules over all web development and technical direction. His favourite drink is a sweet manhatten and his favourite sandwich is a croque-monsieur. For a plethora of miscellany, follow him on Twitter.
Justin
March 10th 2011 @ 12:24 pm #
I think the thing that really surprised me was that people who I know to be aware of issues around privacy and the value in your data and social graph were quite happy to grant access to all that to an unknown 3rd party in exchange for snagging a desired username.
I guess it either speaks of the low value we give to our own privacy or the high value we place on a specific username.
Interesting stuff though.
Marc
March 10th 2011 @ 12:54 pm #
@Justin
I totally understand the issues you’re thinking of, and personally for many services I do value my privacy however I’m happy to use/connect with twitter because I don’t treat my twitter account as private in any way; all my tweets, followings and bio are public. The only thing that could be considered private are DMs, which currently twitter gives access to with standard OAuth permission. That’s my only personal concern which I hope twitter will address soon.
Ary Wibowo
May 4th 2012 @ 9:26 am #
i’m absolutely agree with you. currently i have many same username in several web like google, hotmail, yahoo, etc. but i just using one of them in my daily activities.