I was reminded this weekend of how procrastination can lead undesirable situations. And this lesson came from someone I didn't know and had never interacted with before — Marios Tziortzis. Who is Marios Tziortzis? As far as I can tell he's a pleasant fellow who, like me, has a blog, an interest in the web, and likes photography. But the most important similarity is that we share the same first name.
Normally having the same first name of someone isn't a problem, but when I finally got around to signing up for Twitter this weekend, I was a disappointed to find that an account using just my first name was already taken. You might think it no big deal, but it is for two reasons. First, Twitter doesn't allow enough space for me to use my full name (off by one letter) and second, recognition in the social media space is critical (ones' name being the most recognizable thing with electronic communications).
I knew it was a long shot, but I e-mailed Mr. Tziortzis and asked if he would mind giving up his account. I figured that since he hadn't posted in months that he might not actually care about Twitter. I was, wrong. His response included this, "It's true that I'm not using it much but the reason I registered it
was for future implementation on my site. I'm sorry but I'd like to keep it registered to me."
I have to tip my hat to him. He recognized the potential of a new service early on and staked a claim to the most important real estate — his name. And it cost him nothing. I, on the other hand, ruminated about the value of tweets. Silly me.
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You have a nice blog here Marios and i do not understand why you wrote this post!
My name is not very often around the world and I never had chance to use it as a user name in popular web sites.
So do you think i should write about it in my blogs?
@Zlatko My post was a reminder to sign up for new services as quickly as possible if there's even a remote chance that it will become popular. Doing so early allows you to claim your name before someone else does.