Monday, March 04, 2013

The Write Username for Facebook


It’s been rough.  Tweaking and shifting and changing ... hours wasted ... frustration mounting ... and nothing accomplished.   Oh sorry, that was my blogger template.  This post is about my Facebook username.

There has recently been concern amongst my followers that I am experiencing an identity crisis.  What’s up with all the changes to your name, everyone wanted to know.  Uh oh!  I was trying to change my username and, unfortunately, everyone was getting updates of each one of my erroneous attempts.

There was a problem getting my identity right.  Initially, the username for my Facebook page was The Write Break to tie in with my blog.  Then I realized it wasn’t the blog I was promoting ...because I only write the blog for an online presence for ... well, me.  More about that in a future post.  So, I then changed my username to The Write Break with Phyllis Humby.  Made sense at the time.  However, when I left comments on other writer sites, it looked more like a plug for my blog than a response.  That’s just my opinion, no one made a remark to that effect. 

Regardless, I dropped The Write Break from the username (even though the address remains www.facebook.com/TheWriteBreak )and inserted my middle name to differentiate from my personal Facebook profile.  Regrettably, when I typed in my name, I inadvertently made a typo.  Oops!  I had to change it again.  Each change resulted in an update on your Facebook site.  Oh, brother.  Hence, the questions and feedback.

My explanation was simple enough.  Or so I thought.  They persisted.  Are you planning to use your middle name on future published stories, they asked.  I hadn’t thought of it but, sure, why not.  They then wanted to know if I was changing my name on my blog, too.  How about your magazine column, they asked, will it be Up Close and Personal with Phyllis Louise Humby?  Hmmm ... no, using the middle name sounds too ostentatious. 

My intention all along was simply to distinguish my writer page from my personal profile.  Another suggestion was to change my name on my personal profile.  No!  This was getting out of hand.  Signing into my Facebook account, I returned to the Update Info page and deleted the middle name, leaving it Phyllis Humby, hoping that would be the end of it.  It wasn’t.

More feedback indicated confusion over which site my status updates originated, in the event that people followed both my personal and my writer sites – even though the profile pics were slightly different.    

Seriously, I tended to agree that the two sites should have different usernames and considered using Phyllis Humby, Writer.  I typed it in the space for username and wondered if the word writer would be better with a lower case w.  I almost changed it but enough was enough.  I would not add writer to my name, not with a lower case or an upper case wForget it!  No more changes. 

When I signed off, Facebook asked if I wanted to leave the page because I had unsaved changes.  I didn’t want to save the changes so I said yes, leave the page.  Of course, when you want something saved it disappears, and ... yes, you guessed it ... now we have Change number SIX, Five updates too many for you to scroll through while searching out the good stuff.  Sorry! 

The username for my Facebook writer page is Phyllis Humby, Writer with an upper case W.  It’s going to stay that way unless ... unless you have a suggestion...

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