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

12 points by sam_in_nyc ↗ HN
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?

15 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 27.8 ms ] thread
vaksel
just to clarify...do you mean YourBusinessName@gmail.com?
sam_in_nyc
Exactly. Updated post to clarify.
sarvesh
Twitter I understand. Why secure youdomain@gmail I don't. Also if you are looking for email solution for your domain there is always google apps.
RK
You can have Google host your mail with Apps (for free for basic Gmail level email). And later if you decide you hate Google/Gmail or the next Gmail comes along, you can always switch, but keep your same addresses...
Zev
Why not just secure all of the domains?
sam_in_nyc
Quite obviously because there are so many.
Zev
I was thinking about using something along the lines of 1Password (on mac, at least) and having an autogenerated random password for everything. Not much effort beyond the initial setup and changing the passwords.
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.

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...?)

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.

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.
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.