Well, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO found out pretty soon when he got dissed with a tweet that said “someone tell Eric Schmidt that he didn’t have to use his AIM as his twitter handle”. A few hours later, he changed his handle and Google’s CEO now has a Verified account with the twitter handle @erikschmidt. Obviously he had the ability to pull some strings to get the twitter handle that was more suited to his name.

Oh and in five hours or less, he had 5000 followers. Sigh; life’s just not fair to non-name branders like us, eh?

By the way, Eric Schmidt jumping on the Twitter Bandwagon was news since he had dissed Twitter calling it “the poor-man’s email”.

So what’s in a name? Obviously a lot if you are a name brand. But even if you aren’t a name brand yet, use a twitter handle that is as close to your name so that people know you. I also don’t recommend using a company name as your twitter handle; I find it’s less personal and more prone to spam from people who want to sell things to you. A company name is perfectly fine to use if it is being manned by a customer service or sales representative and should be in addition to your personal twitter profile.