How in the Tech

Searching Username Availability Across Websites

By Adam Myers ⋅ April 6, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Internet

Web 2.0 and social media network in general has caused just about every popular website to require registration for complete access. Whether it’s Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Reddit, Facebook, or Blogger – they all require accounts to be created. Most people typically like to use the same username across sites and if you’ve got a unique or creative username all the better, as it is likely available for use. Things get tricky however if your standard username is already owned by another user who registered before you. This is highly annoying and frustrating as now you’ve got a second (or sometimes third) username to remember and identify with!

Ideally you want to have the same username across all sites, not only as it easier to remember, but it’s essential for branding especially in the era of social media. Namechk is a Web 2.0-like site that can query dozens of the most popular websites out there and return whether your provided username is still available. It’s a free service, done cleanly and most importantly, quickly. Provide any username you wish to check in the provided box and click Chk. Immediately Namechk will begin populating a grid that displays the status of availability of the username. It only takes about 15 seconds in my experience to retrieve the results from the dozens of sites queried. Pretty slick in my book!