Are you a victim of Twitter Squatting? If you’re not careful, you will be. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social sites on the planet, and usernames are disappearing fast. Even if you’re not a “guru”, another person with your name or favorite username can easily beat you to the punch and deny your twitter position.

According to PC World, “Is there evidence of Twitter squatting (squitting?) Let’s check. Yup, every single-letter TwitID is taken. Some are legitimate (Check out “S” for instance, that is a cool personal email assistant service) but X, Y, and Z are place holders.   How about common words? Garage, wow, war, warcraft, Crisco, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, and Chevrolet are all taken. My guess is that Twitter squatters have grabbed all of these in the hopes that they will be worth selling in the not too distant future. Of course the legitimate holders of brands can sue for them and Twitter can just turn them over if asked. But, because the investment and risk for the squatter is zero, you are going to see the rapid evaporation of available Twitter IDs.”

The solution, you ask? Back to PC World: “How to protect your own brand? Immediately go to Twitter.com and determine if your name is available. Get it while you can.”

Even if you have no idea what Twitter is, or how you would use it, there’s no reason to not go there and simply set up a free account, just to lock up your name. Don’t you wish you registered your name or brand back in the 90’s, when domain names were free and easy to get? The same thing is happening with Twitter right now.

Not convinced that Twitter is for real? According to Compete.com, twitter traffic is up an astounding 752% in 2008, from 500,000 unique visitors in January to 4.43 million in December.

Whether you love it, hate it, or don’t even know about it, twitter is a powerful social force, so you might as well grab your “real estate” there now, and ask questions later!