Leonid S. Knyshov

Readers are more likely to click on creative profile names

Are you more likely to click on someone who is R1Rider, StarDancer, or blonde1985? The first two names tell us something interesting about the account holder. R1Rider very likely enjoys riding her Yamaha R1 bike. StarDancer is unlikely to be a wall-flower. What does a name like Blonde1985 tell us?

It suggests the person linked to this name is likely to be as generic as the name.

I ran a quick search as both genders between 25-30 years old near my zip code.

Men’s names that stood out: bayareahiker510 – defines activity in the name, mrwallstreet007 – self-explanatory, good_bunz – makes you wonder, reapingtheshadow – dark and mysterious, caveman4sale – funny, AndyMBA83 – suggests business as one of his primary interests, MixedArtist80 – likes art.

Let us look at women’s name choices: katsalamode – cats served with ice cream sounds fun, macgirl88 – somewhat generic but tells us she’s passionate about macs, asimplemelody – probably likes music.

That is it out of 30 people of each gender. The rest were generic names.

Take the time and come up with a creative name. I recommend including character description or activity as part of your name. Run searches as if you were searching for yourself and assess your competition.

An online dating username is a window into your world

It is a search term to be fed into the likes of Google, Myspace, and messengers

Coming up with a good name to serve as your online identity is not easy. Chances are that once you decide on a good screenname, you will use it as your social network identity and also your instant messenger identity. If done right, this can let you use an expensive dating website and communicate with people you like using off-site tools. The operators of such sites are not happy with that idea, but really there is nothing they can do about it short of enforcing arbitrary usernames.

You need to be aware what information is published that can be linked to your dating username. For example, I own the .com name of my nickname (wiseleo.com). If anyone wants to find me, she can type that into Google or even into the address bar and she will find too much information about me. I have to be aware of every post I make that can be linked to this username. Moreover, it is also linked to my Amazon identity, eBay identity, and so forth. It is too late for me to separate my identities based on 15 years of footprints all over the Internet, so I had to resort to online brand management techniques to keep my search results clean.

It can be used to segment your online identities

One advice for hackers back in the day was “Never use the same nickname twice”. While this advice was written far before time of omniscient search engines, it is far more important today. Even before Google, the FBI routinely caught hackers who reused their names.

I use a different and completely unrelated name when I am experimenting with various websites online.

A variation on this advice would be to have three identities. One is your private social network identity (Facebook and LinkedIn come to mind), one is your messengers and public social networks (Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo), and the final one is your dating sites identity.

CAUTION: If privacy is a concern to you, you should not use your social network or instant messenger name as your online dating profile name

If you wish to limit cyberstalking, it may be beneficial to create this third identity and to ensure that it in no way relates to your real information until such time as you choose to reveal it.

Be careful about copying your profile text across multiple profiles. If a reader runs a quick text string search, which in my browser is literally one click, the search results can potentially expose your other profiles and their linked identities.

Be careful which data you choose to share. Dating web sites are not private walled gardens. They expose a lot of information that can be used to piece together your identity. Assume that everything you wrote inside your profile can be viewed by your family and friends.

About the author

Leonid S. Knyshov writes for HotProfileTips.com about techniques to increase provide views on various online dating sites. I welcome your comments both via this website and via Twitter.

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HotProfileTips.com by Leonid S. Knyshov