Internet user IDs turn honest

NEW YORK —- In the 1998 box office hit “You’ve Got Mail,” the anonymous screen names of Meg Ryan (Shopgirl) and Tom Hanks (NY152) turned unwitting foes into paramours, giving Americans their first dose of a digital-age romantic comedy.

Early AOL users may chuckle now at that signature dial-up modem din: a strung-out chorus of pings and bleeps interrupted by the fuzz of static and white noise. And these days, handles like Shopgirl and NY152 seem so, well, 1998.

More than 10 years later, Internet handles are practically second to one’s identity. They signal our arrival in e-mail inboxes and can often be the first impression we make. User names of yore-college-era holdovers or an inscrutable series of computer-generated numbers tacked on to one’s login-are increasingly frowned upon as unprofessional and frivolous.

Though the World Wide Web is still littered with aliases and anonymous monikers, today’s tech-savvy users have shunned going incognito and are signing on with their real names. As the Internet has evolved into a crucial professional, socializing and marketing tool, it has also created an imperative to be oneself online.

“Your real name tells people, ‘I want you to take me seriously,’ ” said Mike Gaines, a software engineer who co-hosts a podcast about social media. One’s real name is not only easier to recall, it also connotes accountability. Early Internet users were mostly of the hacker variety and had reason to hide behind code names.

These days, using one’s real name can alleviate suspicions that a spammer lurks behind a seemingly nonsensical string of letters and numbers. A recent analysis of more than 1.7 million Twitter profiles by Internet marketing company HubSpot counted 59 followers for the average user. That number dropped to 47 when the user name included an underscore and down to 29 when numbers were used.

For Joe Cascio, who began on Yahoo as “jc091447” in 2000 and evolved to “joec0914” when he signed up for Gmail in 2006, Twitter was the impetus to abandon a decades-old alias comprising his initials and birthday digits. “I noticed people weren’t getting the handle right,” said Cascio, a software developer from Stonington, Conn., and he was missing out on his Twitter messages. He ditched his cyborg-like handle and is now registered under his real name.

“It was this kind of gradual process of becoming yourself,” Cascio said. “JC could be Johnny Carson, Jesus Christ,” he said of his old formula. Now anytime Cascio joins something new, he makes sure to sign up as “joecascio.” Corporations like Comcast are doing it too, allowing their employees to blog or Twitter as themselves, eschewing the ethos of the nameless corporate identity.

Though there may not be a flood of Joe Cascios rushing to register on domains across the Web, not everyone is so lucky to snatch up their given names. For years Mike Volpe’s nom de Internet was “mvolpe70.” It originated in the AOL days, when “all the names were taken,” Volpe said. But having those double digits appended to his user name wasn’t so bad. It was his jersey number in the glory days of college football.

“It didn’t really matter, because e-mail addresses didn’t replace your name,” Volpe said. That is, until two years ago, when he got on Twitter. “People start to call you by your Twitter name,” said Volpe, vice president for inbound marketing at HubSpot in Boston. He’s now simply “mvolpe.”

” ‘Mikevolpe’ wasn’t available,” Volpe said when recalling his identity change. Someone beat him to it. “I’ve actually tried to contact him,” Volpe said of his digital doppelganger. “I’m looking at whoever it is. He only has 13 followers, and he hasn’t updated since October 2008,” he said with a hint of exasperation.

Though pseudonyms were preferable in the early days of the Internet for reasons that still apply —- in order to gripe freely without being identified, out of safety concerns and to prevent identity theft —- a shift from anonymity to accountability indicates that these days people want to be found.

“I personally don’t see why you shouldn’t be yourself,” said David Pogue, New York Times tech columnist, in an e-mail. He even wrestled “DavidPogue” back from an impostor on Twitter. “I always use my own name as my handle. If you have nothing to hide, why not?”

Christine Cavalier, a freelance writer from Philadelphia, took that idea further.

“How is your long-lost cousin going to know what your user name is?” Cavalier said —- not to mention old friends, employers looking to hire and even potential love interests.

“If you don’t want to be connected to anybody ever again or any group whatsoever, if you’re totally antisocial, don’t go on the Internet,” Cavalier said.

Staking claim to one’s Internet identity is so crucial that Volpe’s taking it into consideration for his progeny.

“My wife will kill me for saying this,” he said. “If we ever have kids, I’ll only name them something if the domain name is available.”