Internet Identity
I've had to accept that my name isn't particularly unique. It's not as common as John Smith, but there are already 8 Michael Daly's famous enough to merit a Wikipedia page, including a Medal of Honor recipient. I don't quite have the credentials for a Wikipedia page, but I am competing with hundreds of Michael Daly's for email addresses, domain names, and Twitter handles.
I lost that battle over ten years ago, when I had to settle for different combinations of my name, initials, and birthday for all of my internet accounts, which, In hindsight, was probably not the smartest thing to do. For some accounts, even underscores and middle initials couldn't save me from tacking on an extra few digits to find an available username. I can only imagine what will be left for account-creators in 20 years, as platforms like Gmail and Twitter appear poised to maintain relevance for at least that long.
Perhaps usernames devolve into garbled, randomized 12-character identifiers and we will add new people to our social network or contacts lists via links and QR codes. Snapchat's Snapcodes appear prepared for this world. Usernames themselves won't matter as long as users can also label their profile with whatever name they choose.
One method of obtaining a cleaner email address would be to purchase a domain name, and set up custom email addresses like firstname@customdomain. Maybe a top-level domain like .family breaks the .com dominance by becoming a norm for email if people set up domains for their families to share. The primary tradeoff here is the cost. Custom domains and email hosting aren't free, but some people are starting to recognize that transactions of privacy and personal data aren't exactly "free" either. New services like hey.com are emerging to offer premium email solutions to those who are willing to pay for a better email. Maybe a new service will overthrow today's behemoths and members of the next generation will get a chance to snag original usernames.
We can't simply recycle old email addresses after they are inactive for a certain period because of the security risk to any other active accounts that may authenticate with that email. However, social media accounts like Twitter don't carry that burden. Somewhat selfishly, I wish Twitter would make old usernames available if the user hasn't even logged into the site for 24 months. I never liked my Twitter handle. I just settled for what I could get in June 2010. This summer, ten years later, I started looking for alternatives. I wrote a script for a bot to scan for English-dictionary words that were available and valid usernames for Twitter. Out of over 25,000 words the bot checked, only about a dozen were available. They were generally not a desirable bunch. For example, as of writing, @cyclopean is available for whomever would like their handle to be a word describing a type of ancient masonry. Maybe there's a construction company out there that could save themselves from a hefty marketing fee if they snag it. I personally claimed @breakneck. Feel free to reach out to me for an available username, or you can use the script on GitHub and scan your own dictionaries.
While usernames seem destined to lose their importance, having one that you don't have to spell out to share with someone during a conversation is one of the subtle pleasures of life on the internet. I'm certain we'll all reminisce on the days when usernames didn't resemble social security numbers and how cleverly substituting $'s and 0's for letters let us claim the internet identity we wanted.