Well, the day has come. I never thought it would happen with my rather intense addiction to Twitter, but I have finally decided it was time for the resignation of JB140 from Twitter. There basically 13 reason for this leave, which I will get to in a few minutes.
Some might be wondering, is Jeremy going following the trails of some other social media people and taking a hiatus from Twitter? Not at all. Let me share what the thirteen reasons were for JB140 to leave Twitter. It’s actually pretty simple, my actual name, @jeremyblanton became available. When I originally signed up for Twitter in August 2008, I wasn’t very smart. The first username I created was MyrtleBeachBlog which fit well with my real estate branding at that time. However, once I moved away from selling houses, it didn’t fit well anymore.
So, I tried desperately to get my name at that time, but it was secured by someone already. I tried all types of variations at that time and almost all of them were taken. That was when my friend Jeff Turner suggested JB140 as a username. It was simple and easy to remember so I made the change in November 2009. So for almost the past three years I’ve used that Twitter username. While it was a great name, I always wished I could obtain my actual name on Twitter as a username.
Two weeks ago on our weekly social media radio show Ken had found a special guest who was the founder of a service called Knowem.com. It is a service that allows you to secure a username on hundreds of social networks that are out there for you. They will secure your identity if it is available so that you don’t have to do all the work yourself. On their home page however, they have a section where you can put in a username and it will give you quick results showing whether it is available or not on a social network.
Running the test quickly revealed that the username was now available, so I quickly ran over to Twitter and secured the username. I guess either the inactive account that was originally set up was either removed by Twitter, or the person that had @jeremyblanton changed it to something else. Either way, I thank him for doing so.
Today I made the switch and retired JB140. So, if you are used to communicating with me on Twitter as @JB140 it’s time to switch to talk to @jeremyblanton.