Should I give up part of my online identity?
I took on the moniker e14n (some time before 2009) as it was the shortest representation of my name that wasn't already widely used. Its a play on the contraction of internationalization to i18n, which has come up a bit in the 10 years I have worked in Japan.
Like a few passive narcissists I have on occasion searched for my various identities online.
Today I received a polite letter asking me if I would consider role over my twitter account. I am a business owner and I know how much we really struggled with branding so I would really like to help, but a number of issues don't sit well with me.
1. It is likely to confused people because we are both involved in open source, and most of the people following me are connected through this association.
2. I don't think it serves the other company well. There doesn't seem to be a strong connection with the company (it is being used as a contraction of ephemeralization).
3. Having had to deal with the stupid real name only bs in social networks it really offends me someone trying to take away my nic.