[dkersten]

> instagram.com/sussexroyal is a much more memorable URL than instagram.com/y2q9g6uo

Since there are a limited number of memorable names available, anyone late to the party gets stuck with non-memorable names. Why not even the playing field?

[notahacker]

Most social networks would see rewarding early adopters as a benefit rather than a drawback. Besides which, TheThreeWordName or JohnBSmith1982 is still a lot more memorable than a random alphanumeric string.

As another person said further down, it's why we have domain names rather than IP addresses. Sure, the way in which they're distributed might be suboptimal, but not nearly as suboptimal as making everyone have to remember the IP address or rely entirely upon a search function that returns ever-changing results.

[cr0sh]

> Most social networks would see rewarding early adopters as a benefit rather than a drawback.

But in this particular case, they weren't the early adopters...

The real "early adopter" was robbed of his name, for a (imho) is a lame excuse.