The next great land grab

Anyone remember the early days, when most domains were available? Then there were the squatters, then a marketplace, then the parkers, and still, to this days, friends of mine buy domains for amounts up to $5000.

And now there are the networks. I grabbed dmeyer on gmail early on, but with each new account (Twitter, friendfeed, etc.) there are new names to grab, better names, simpler names that imply you were an early mover to the technology.

But I'm seeing for the first time people madly registering names for things they are interested in, especially on Twitter. And it seems that these handles within a domain are becoming quite valuable. Will we be seeing a marketplace for them emerge? Already people are selling real estate on their twitter profiles. And others are suggesting that right after registering your domain name, you need to secure the same name on Twitter.

Fascinating, especially for a site that seems to be up about 50% of the time. Of course, I spent the morning searching for handles that were still available...