How Adam Got @Adam and Became Cool Online

January 19, 2011 at 5:00 am PT

All Rob Goldman ever wanted was to be himself. In the Silicon Valley start-up obsessed world he inhabits, that means being facebook.com/rob or @Rob on Twitter.

But Mr. Goldman can’t get what he wants, even at a website he founded. The 40-year-old chief executive signs up for about 10 new networks and Internet services a week. Going through the online registration process that often, Mr. Goldman says, you want as few user names as possible, and ideally just one. The shorter, the better.

For a lot of people, social media is about image: the pictures you want others to see, the places you want to be known for frequenting. Nothing is more fundamental than a brand name.

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Tagged with: brand name, digital, frontpage, Internet, Katherine Rosman, registration, Rob Goldman, Silicon Valley, social networking, software, The Wall Street Journal, Twitter, username

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