• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 21, 2010

KnowEm, a startup that helps companies and consumers keep track of their online identities, on Thursday is expected to announce the acquisition of rival service FriendsCall.Me. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Both KnowEm and FriendsCall.Me launched last April, catering to social media-conscious companies anxious to get a handle on their online identities across various communities and content platforms.

"Much like with domain names, there's now a race to create identities in social media," said Barry Wise, co-founder of KnowEm. "But managing identities in social media is far more complex than securing a domain name."

For free, KnowEm helps brand owners check the availability of their branded usernames and keywords across roughly 330 social media networks. KnowEm then returns a list of social networks where the brand is and isn't registered, and automatically secures names and profiles on various sites.

"There are hundreds of popular social networks, with new sites popping up each day," added Wise. "It's a challenge enough for companies to keep track of where they have a presence, not to mention the time-consuming work of creating profiles where they don't."

Last October, KnowEm debuted several premium services, which cost between $99 and $350, and helped marketers register desired usernames across hundreds of social networks, along with setting up profiles, avatars, full biographies, and URLs.

FriendsCall.Me was the brainchild of Darius Monsef IV, the creator of design community COLOURlovers.com, and community organizer for Microsoft's Photosynth.com.