by Clint Lalonde | All the rest in , ,

Change usernames in your Delicious network

Delicious was the first of the current breed of Web 2.0 social networks I signed up for. In retrospect, I wish it was one of the last because one of the things I didn’t quite realize then that I fully get now is that in order for these social tools to work their magic, you have to be found. And that means your name.

My Delicious name is the very unfortunate WindTech. At the time, I was heavy into freelance work with my own company, called Wind (which had nothing to do with weather, but that is another story), hence the WindTech.

Well, Wind has come and gone, but unfortunately the name WindTech has stuck on my Delicious account. I wish I could simply change it, but in Delicious, you cannot change your username. I would have to delete my account and create a new one, but that means rebuilding my network. The name doesn’t bug me that much.

But even though I cannot change my name, you can if I am in your network. A tweet from Delicious a few days ago let me know that you can now change the display names of people in your network. So, while I cannot change WindTech to Clint Lalonde, if you are in my delicious network at least you can so I appear as a real person as opposed to some semi-corporate entity in your network.

Since then I have learned the authenticity lesson of social networking – be yourself. So now when I sign up for a social network I am now me – Clint Lalonde.

Er, except on Last.fm where I am MondoCanuck. That was social network #2.

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Clint Lalonde

Just a guy writing some stuff, mostly for me these days on this particular blog. For my EdTech/OpenEd stuff, check out https://edtechfactotum.com/.

 

11 thoughts on “Change usernames in your Delicious network”

  2. Pingback:   On the episode of The Office where Dwight was in Second Life and his avatar looked EXACTLY like him by ClintLalonde.net

  3. Same here, I used the username S1tHSL4y3r for all my online accounts, including delicious. Recently after considerable thought I decided I would abandon this name and choose a new, more user-friendly and better looking name. Which meant a lot of the social networking sites I had signed up for under the old one would have to be changed.

    Twitter was the most flexible, allowing users to change their username and profile url as many times as they like. Facebook had a one-time username change which was good. Myspace states in their FAQ that username/profile url cannot be changed, however due to their latest feature MyspaceMail, a one-time change can be taken advantage of, by creating a MyspaceMail with your new username which updates your profile url. Unfortunately I could not do the same with my accounts on Youtube, Google, Skype, MyOpenID, Steam, DeviantArt etc; a new account had to be created.

    The same applies with Delicious. The only workaround they offer is described in their FAQ, to create a new account, export everything from old and import into new. So in that respect, it's not as bad as rebuilding everything from scratch again. But still somewhat of a nuisance.

  5. Nothing wrong with the name WindTech. It's just that it's not me anymore. There is no connection (or at the very least, a tenuous connection) between the name WindTech and me, Clint Lalonde. It can make it a bit tougher for people who may want to find me and follow me to do just that.

    As I get deeper into the social network and begin to follow more and more people/blogs/delicious accounts/Facebook accounts/ Twitter accounts ad nauseum, I like being able to link what someone is doing in one forum with what they are doing on another network, and that is usually by their name.

    Here is a concrete example of handle vs real name. I've been following a person on Twitter that uses a handle. We've been in each others network for a few months, exchanged a few messages and resources. He's been a valuable Twitter connection.

    2 weeks ago I got a friend request from someone I have never heard of. If I don't know your name on FB, then I probably am not going to follow you back. So, the friend request sat there for a week and a bit. It wasn't until I did a bit of digging that I realized the person who had sent me the FB friend reuqest was the person I've been following on Twitter for the past few months. If I wouldn't have spent the time trying to track down the friend request, I might never have known that and passed up a possible connection with someone who has been a valuable part of my Twitter network.

  7. At least with my delicious username I was able to create it – a big improvement over the early days. Last night I remembered that my first email account on Freenet was randomly chosen by some server somewhere and hooked the handle whg115 on me.

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