Check social handles before the name is final

A handle is the platform's, a domain is yours

A domain is registered to you in a public record. A registrarRegistrarThe company you buy and renew a domain through, such as Namecheap or GoDaddy. It does not own the name, it only registers it for you.Read the definition sells it to you under rules that come from the registryRegistryThe organisation that runs an ending, like the company behind .com. It sets the rules and the price registrars pay.Read the definition, the company that runs the ending. The domain stays yours as long as you pay the renewalRenewalThe yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.Read the definition.

A handle is an entry in one platform's private database, under terms that the platform writes and can change.

A platform's terms can bar the sale of a handle. Twitter's rules barred the sale of accounts, so Israel acquired the @israel handle through a loophole, according to press reports that Elliot Silver relayed on DomainInvesting on 14 September 2010.

The price of @israel was first reported in six figures in 2010, and a newspaper later put it at $3,000. A domain can be listed and sold in the open. The sale of that handle needed a loophole.

A username that sits idle can be recycled. Yahoo had begun handing recycled email addresses and usernames to people who asked for them, Silver reported on DomainInvesting on 26 August 2013. The post says that Silver had received one of those addresses.

A platform's rules change too. Facebook shows a page's posts to a subset of the page's followers, and it wants the business to pay to reach the rest (Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 5 October 2021).

On 21 January 2025 Allemann described a weekend on which US visitors were shut out of TikTok for a few hours, and creators' businesses were shut out with them. Allemann's conclusion is this chapter's: build on a domain that no platform can take away. Point your handles at the domain, and never the other way round.

Why the same minute

Little time passes between a word becoming known and its addresses being taken. Andrew Allemann told one founder's story on Domain Name Wire on 21 August 2011. The founder found a domain free, saw that the matching Twitter handle was free too, and registered only the domain.

When the founder came back a couple of days later, an unused account had taken the handle. The title of Allemann's article asked whether bots were reading new registrations, and the article could not say.

Allemann's article also noted that someone who downloads the registry's daily list of registered names sees a new name within about a day, and that watching DNSDNSThe system that turns a domain name into the address of the machine serving the site. Its records also show whether a name runs a real site, an email service, or nothing at all.Read the definition is faster. Its advice was to take the handle when you register the domain.

The same thing happens to domains. Instagram launched in October 2010 on instagr.am, Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 20 January 2016, from a court filing. At that time an investor held Instagram.com. Another buyer bought it about a month later, as the app neared a million users.

In January 2011 the company decided to pay $100,000 for Instagram.com. It had filed its US trademarkTrademarkA registered right over a name inside one line of business. Owning a domain gives you no trademark, and a domain can collide with somebody else’s.Read the definition application in September 2010, less than a month before the launch, and it had not secured the .com. Three months passed between the launch and a six-figure purchase, which shows how short that time is.

Let a taken handle decide only close choices

A taken handle is a fact about the word, not a verdict on it. Elliot Silver wrote on DomainInvesting on 26 July 2018 of being asked twice by buyers, when selling a name, whether the seller also held the matching Twitter handle. Both times the answer was no, and that did not change the negotiation.

Silver's later post on DomainInvesting on 27 November 2019 added that a matching handle is a nice thing but not necessarily critical, and that the ones its author wanted were long gone. A matching handle makes life a bit easier for a buyer, the post said, but Silver does not chase one for most names. A founder need not wait for one either.

A handle has a cheap fallback: you add a short prefix or suffix to the word on the same platform. Many platforms let you rename the handle later, and each platform's help page says what a rename keeps. A domain has no such fallback. Changing a domain later means a new address, new email and a move for every customer.

So the handle decides between finalists that pass the other checks: the renewal, the trademark and the ending. On its own, a taken handle rules out nothing. It can still warn you. A word that active companies have taken on every platform has many namesakes, and the second case in this chapter shows one.

The domain first, then the handle to match

Many companies that buy a good domain take the matching handle too. As James Iles noted on Domain Name Wire on 2 September 2021, Owner, a restaurant software company, had acquired Owner.com in June 2021 and the @Owner handle as well. The same article says that many brands now do this alongside a premium domainPremium domainA name the registry or the seller prices above the standard fee, usually because the word is short or in demand. The higher price often applies to every renewal too, not just the first year.Read the definition purchase.

On 14 July 2021, the day after Remote announced $150 million in funding, James Iles reported on Domain Name Wire that the company runs on Remote.com and on @Remote on Twitter and Instagram.

The order can also run the other way. Andrew Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 5 January 2010 that MSNBC had bought BreakingNews.com, and that the purchase seemed to start from MSNBC's @breakingnews handle, which had over 1.5 million followers.

One platform has joined the domain and the handle. Bluesky lets a domain you own be your handle, Kevin Murphy wrote on Domain Incite on 18 November 2024. The handle is verified through a short record in your domain's DNS settings, so nobody else can claim it.

What to look at, platform by platform

No register of handles exists, so you look at each platform yourself. Open the profile address that carries your exact word: x.com/word, instagram.com/word, tiktok.com/@word, youtube.com/@word and linkedin.com/company/word. Then search for the word in both app stores. The rules on names and idle accounts change, so read each platform's own help page. Write down the four things in this section's numbered list.

A handle can draw a trademark claim, as a domain can. An insurance company filed a federal lawsuit over a Twitter username carrying its name, Andrew Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 9 June 2011. The lawsuit added a cybersquattingCybersquattingRegistering a domain to profit from somebody else’s trademark. The owner of the mark can bring a claim or go to court.Read the definition charge, which means taking a name to profit from a brand. The suit did not ask for the username, and Allemann called it an attempt to stretch the law.

If a company trades under your word, search the US and EU registers, USPTOUSPTOThe United States Patent and Trademark Office, the public register searched to spot obvious trademark conflicts early. Searching it is a first check, never legal clearance.Read the definition and EUIPOEUIPOThe European Union Intellectual Property Office, the public register of EU trademarks. Searching it is a first check, never legal clearance.Read the definition, for trademarks in force in your class, as the trademark chapter explains. Take your own case to a lawyer before you build. A register shows what is registered, never that you are safe.

1. 1Whether the handle is taken or free, first for the exact word, then for the variant you would settle for.
2. 2Whether a taken handle is alive or idle: write the date of the last post you can see.
3. 3Who holds the handle: a person, a fan page, or a company trading under the word, in which case it becomes a trademark question.
4. 4In the app stores, whether an app in your category is named with the exact word, and how many ratings that app has.

What our checker covers, and what it leaves to you

Unique Domains checks endings, not handles. A handle is one platform's private record, and no public register exists that a scanner can read. So the availability checker reads registries and registrars, and it never reads a platform. The handle search stays yours to do by hand.

On the website, you type a word or a name. As a visitor you get one live check a day, after a test that you are human. A word typed alone is taken as its .com name. The answer gives the status, the price today and any renewal trapRenewal trapA cheap first year followed by a renewal at least twice the first year and at least $10 more. The low price wins the sale, and the yearly fee afterwards is where the cost really is.Read the definition in words. After that, it shows the word on five other endings, and counts for the rest.

In Product, the checker comes with the Investor plan. It runs one word across the endings we track, and puts those with a sale in the last 12 months first.

In that checker, each ending reads Available, Premium, For sale or Taken, and comes with its first-year price, its seller and the renewal trap flag. The flag is raised when a renewal is at least twice the first year and ten dollars above it.

On the Founder plan, use Browse and type your word. Each row is a name on one ending, either your word or a related one, and it shows the name's status today, its price and its seller.

Before the name is final

• Search for the exact word on X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and both app stores, in one sitting.
• For each taken handle, note the last activity you can see and who holds it.
• Pick the variant you would use if the exact handle stays taken, and make it the same one on every platform.
• If a company trades under the word, search USPTO and EUIPO for trademarks in force in your class.
• Register the handles on the same day as the domain, with the company's email and not a founder's.
• Read the platform's terms on selling or transferring accounts before you offer a holder anything.
• Point every profile link at your domain, and never point the domain at a handle.
• Let a taken handle decide only between finalists that pass every other check.