My point is that it's an old problem in desperate search of a solution. We need a single name that works across all sites. Why should I have to tell people that I'm AndrewWarner on Hacker news and Twitter, but if they want to find me on digg on AndrewDiggs because AndrewWarner was already taken. And if the want to find me...
We need one public identifier that works across all networks.
Solve it the same way that they solve naming conflicts in programming languages: namespaces (Edit: as others have suggested).
There is both a "whitehouse.com" (it has a landing page at the moment, SFW) and a "whitehouse.gov"
I tend to side with Twitter here. Don't like it? Go create your own website (set up a laconi.ca node). I don't think that there is any inherent justification in the first-come-first-serve method of provisioning, maybe it is just an artifact of our culture?
We need one public identifier that works across all networks.
What do you think?