Open The Dialogue

Even after being shut down last week, Usernamecheck.com is doing something interesting and not often seen in the volitale ocean of start-ups and side projects on the web:  showing anyone how to re-create it.

This pet project-turned-social media hot button voluntarily shut down on February 19th.   It was the one-stop shop for finding out if your preferred username was taken or not among 65 different networks and services.  Boasting over one million unique visitors at the time of its shuttering, upkeep and hosting became an unavoidable problem.  In fact, it was only 10 days after the site checked its 500,000^th name that the plug was pulled.

Earlier today, their  Twitter page announced that the site put up a how-to guide, encouraging someone to pick up where usernamecheck.com left off.   The site is offering to link to any clones that are submitted as well.   The web should have more of this:  lowering the barrier to entry so anyone can create something that is actually useful and valuable to the largest amount of people.  It’s often a big driver behind today’s most popular social applications and is also a pretty good rule of thumb when it comes to creating on the web for your brand – “what’s in it for me?”

Hopefully we’ll see some interesting re-creatings or derivatives of this soon.  What improvements would you make to the Usernamecheck if you built a clone?

Google shook-up the location-based service marketplace today with the introduction of Latitude, a feature built to augment the already hulking power of Google Maps.  Rex Sorgatz eerily forecasted this announcement when he saw lots of people jumping ship from the soon-to-be shuttered Dodgeball over to BrightKite.

Similar to BrightKite, Latitude lets you broadcast your location to almost anyone through coordinates generated by your mobile device.  ”Almost anyone,” unfortunately, means only your contacts on Google/Gmail.  For those of you who love Google and letting the greater web know where you are at all times, wait your turn – for now.

What does this mean for PR?  The implications for location-based marketing are huge.  From opt-in sharing ideas to just getting a better idea of where your audience frequents, a whole new dimension for connecting people is being pushed by one of the biggest names on the web.  A very big step.

What do you think?  This set our minds off to the races with pretty awesome ideas but we want to hear from OTD readers about how you think Latitude fits inside the marketing communications world.  Let us know!