One of the great challenges I have faced my whole life is my name. I have joked for a long time that I want to change my name to Dean Skywalker, or something a little easier to spell. Dean Ouellette is not the easiest name in the world to spell, but it’s my name.

Towards the end of last year I decided I needed to control my name. Being in real estate and meeting a lot of people I wanted to be easy to find and when you searched for  Dean Ouellette you would find me and not an artist in San Francisco.

As most who will read this also know I am a big believer and user of social networking. I am very active on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. I also knew it was not going to be easy for someone to find me on Facebook as more often then not when they typed in my name they would not be typing “Ouellette,” but likely “Ouelette” or “Oullette” or “Ouellete” or… you get the point. It is more often than not my last name is misspelled.

I decided to steal an idea I had seen someone else use and I registered DeanOnFacebook.com.  I would then take that page and make it a direct link to my Facebook page. No worries about name being misspelled again.

I could not see a reason why Facebook would have a problem with that. After all if you were to look at the back of my business card, see DeanOnFacebook.com and wonder what that was you would be sent directly to a Facebook page. In theory more traffic for Facebook and more people seeing their advertising. It’s not like I created a parody site or I am trying to make money off it, just trying to make my Facebook page easier to find.

(Maybe instead of Dean Skywalker I should change my name to Dean Facebook.)

Here is the letter they sent me today. And it is a good thing I got it on my Blackberry because it went into my Gmail spam folder and would have never seen it. [Read more...]