Facebook will soon be allowing all users to claim a vanity URL pointing to their regular profile page, we’ve heard from a reliable source. The announcement should come sometime later this week. Afterwards, at a certain date and time, the landrush will begin. Users will be able to grab a vanity URL of their choice.
The Landrush rules will prohibit trademark infringement and a lots of words will be blacklisted, such as generic terms. But for the most part, we hear, users will be able to grab a name that they like.
Facebook has been toying with vanity URLs for some time. URLs for user profiles are currently user id numbers – such as facebook.com/profile.php?id=500065899 (that’s me). In March some Facebook pages started rolling out with vanity URLs, although you must have a business relationship with Facebook (or know someone there) to get one. Facebook.com/techcrunch, for example, links to our TechCrunch page.
The reason they need them – vanity URLs have proven to be a powerful tool on MySpace, Twitter and other services. It’s not just that users like them and it makes telling people your profile name easier. People have also long used MySpace URLs as their online identity. Twitter, more recently, has started to become the online identity provider of choice. Even Google is getting in on the vanity URL game. Facebook doesn’t want to give that up.
Facebook has recently polled users to see if they’d pay for a vanity URL. We have no idea if they plan on charging for the landrush at this point.
Stay tuned, and in the meantime start thinking up that perfect Facebook name. I want facebook.com/mike myself. Oh wait, I guess Facebook employees get first pick. So you’re also out of luck if you’re name is Mark.
If I don’t get /joedawson then I’ll probably not be interested in becoming a variant, for example; joedawson1, joe_dawson etc
dream big, Joe. facebook.com/joe
Some Facebook employee’s already grabbed mine.
Well at least they’re allowing 4-letter names. I wonder if they allow 3, 2, or 1.
fb could encash if they sold only to businesses. Bad decision, but if it comes to TC means it is certain future.
Hope fb won’t give away ParisLemon.
This is true although I probably have more chance with the surname
I have big chances to get mine
Facebook.com/anterpreet
Not anymore
LMAO. Well done Anterpreet!
I think facebook should allow you to just follow someones facebook status just like twitter. So you can be subscribed just to there updates. It can also auto update you if you have been tagged in a photo if a new video has been posted. ( which is all controllable)
Maybe to increase revenue they should have the login screen abit higher up, And traffic ads and make there home page within latest news of whats going on and maybe make it an actual world news ect.
I think facebookVanity URL will make it easier to find people. I think it will minimise the search functionality abit.
could you i cant find my comment from earlier. could you please send it back to me RTS. thanks for your help.
Good morning Facebook. Welcome to the web2.0
I know that when you have 200M users you moving slowly (=carefully?) but c’mon… this is very basic stuff, no?
gah my names john smith
the TECHCRUNCH facebook url is wrong.
thx. fixed.
The TechCrunch URL is working fine for me.
Personally I am hoping we will be able to point the urls to pages, not just profiles
They should have had this years ago.
Yeah, it is very MySpace of them, no? Doesn’t MySpace do this for their users?
Harry “uses neither but thought he recalled seeing it in some skanky myspace user profiles he was spanking to one night” Wang
maybe after claiming vanity url’s, this will allow us to finally have @ replies in facebook statuses?
Hey Jeff, some people are in love with the @ reply. I honestly don’t understand it, can you please explain why this is such an important part of the user experience? Not asking in a bad way, I really just want to understand the rationale behind it.
I think having a relative link to users adds a certain richness to the user experience. For example, if my status update were to say, “Going to lunch with Mary.” Most of my old friends may no know who Mary is.
But, if I were able to reference her profile in the status update by saying, “Going to lunch with (link to Mary’s Profile).” then they could see her default picture, realize she’s a hot, and congratulate me accordingly as a I return to the office to a cavalcade of high fives.
My thoughts exactly Michael.
So you basically want an easy way to tag people in status updates. Correct?
An @reply for facebook is rendered useless by the fact that you can already comment on status updates.
Thats because a lot of sites opened up that gave you access to private profiles. And facebook doesn’t compromise privacy..
Goshhh. .I only started using those sites.. And they have fixed it ..
I do hope they announce this at the top of the news feed. Dropping a unique usernames architecture on a 200 million + userbase has to mean fun times. It’s almost guaranteed to lead to drugs, violence & looting.
The photo is too funny. Is it from that really bad Tom Cruise movie? Far and Away I think.
This is dumb they should just make it your first and last name ( middle for tie breaker) to avoid all the stupid tweeny whorebag names that myspace has… This is part of their competitive advantage., (clean layout and not anything like myspace)
Do you have any idea how many Ben Kings there are in the world? Even then, do you know how many Ben Charles Kings there are? How could they possibly make it first-middle-last name for everyone?
Ben King the 1st…
Ben King the 2nd
Ben King the 7846294978048th
in the case of first middle and last being the same then they should get a number appended to the end as punishment for their parents being lame and unoriginal
regardless, they need to figure something that is classy and uniform or risk having thousands of “Sexybitch” “barbiedoll” and “Iheartmileycirus”
Is facebook.com/southcarolinasucks taken?
Vanity URL’s finally! My only Problem with facebook is 2 things they should up the group limit messages from 5,000 to 10,000 because groups are filling up quicker.
They should also instead of fan page updates convert updates into inbox messages to make things much easier. i am more prone to check message inbox to read updates.
Vanity URL’s its about time i would like to see them change 2 things. increase group messages from 5000 to more than 10,000 as groups are filling up quicker and fan pages instead of updates on the side each update should fly into the message inbox much easier for all users
what do you think?
I have good chance with Johny. One “n” in my name is rare.
But in the end who cares. Its just some short ego trip
It would be better for FB to work on their poor email features because Google Wave will blow them away.
Uh… PINE blows Facebook Mail away, forget about Google Wave.
Great, i think i can easily get Facebook.com/anterpreet
well great update by Tech Crunch, what about bringing this to Digg ?
http://digg.com...ty_URL_Landrush
good for facebook, bad for all but 1 John Smith.
Really good job is doing facebook.This is best and more visible option to brand publicity.People can remember Brand links directly.
Nice article. Thanks for giving the heads up Mike!
I am absolutely thrilled that Facebook has something which they can help make revenue through. I would also be thrilled if they offer Vanity emails @facebook etc. Interesting.
Ignore the tens of thousands of arbitrary facebook “victims”
People lose all their data and cantacts, photos, etc
The morons at facebook cancel accounts w/ NO valid reasons, they ignore complaints, there is no appeal.
This company and their lying harmful workers should NOT be popular. They should be out of business
We know where they work: let’s go beat the hell out of their workers
wtf?
facebook.yourdomainname .com
Don’t forget about the SEO benefit. Not that they already need it, since they already rank highly for a lot of people’s names, but now they’ll rank even higher, if they implement it correctly.
I hope the buzz about this will not blow out of proportion. When MySpace provide vanity urls, they do it in oh-so-subtly, hence I got my first name to be put on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/vinod. Hoping I can get the same vanity url for Facebook.
Either way, I think they have been seriously thought about it since all major social networking sites, from Friendster to MySpace, Plurk to Twitter has provided vanity urls to their users. I also personally think when will they be implementing this.
A bit disappointed actually if they charge for the vanity url. There goes the free service of Facebook. If they start to charge for one thing, usually, it will leads to more things to come.
I’m in the dark about this, I’m wondering if it is going to cost anything.
Could I use “I’m No Relation to Paul Hogan”
When they expose your own wall at your vanity URL, that will be another attack on Twitter.
Facebook forbidden in indonesian .. I confused this with the action ..I hope this does not happen.. enjoy
FB is sick. According to alexa, nearly 1 out of 5 internet users visits FB every day. Its gonna be the google of social Notworking
I agree; it’s a long awaited move and very welcome
MM
There was nothing wrong with the name Michael Bolton.
Yay! Facebook is finally learning from Compuserve! Way to stay on top of the curve, guys.
Insert barefeet into mouth.
I would be shocked if Facebook offered this as a free service to businesses. I hope this is a free service, but at some point I just wonder when the pay window is going to open.
sweet! it’s about time FB did this. what about this?
username.facebook.com
What are the odds of http://www.worstpizza.com getting Pizza! Would be great if that was possible!
I wonder how they’ll handle the squatting issue. Also, I wonder if/how they’ll authenticate business names.
This day can’t come soon enough–the lack of vanity urls has been a huge roadblock in being able to most effectively use Facebook for the association I work for. It is ridiculously hard to direct people to your page on Facebook if you’re a non-profit: “Go to Facebook and search ‘company name’” yields pages of results when people set up groups under your association’s name!
Fu ck Facebook
Vanity URL’s finally! My only Problem with facebook is 2 things they should up the group limit messages from 5,000 to 10,000 because groups are filling up quicker.
They should also instead of fan page updates convert updates into inbox messages to make things much easier. i am more prone to check message inbox to read updates.
FYI, currently you can get a more recognizable FB URL. I recognize that it’s not perfect as it’s a bit long.
1. Visit your profile and scroll to the bottom of the left-hand column
2. Click on the “Create a Profile Badge” link
3. Copy the URL that is in the href attribute of the HTML link tag.
4. You’ll end up with something like http://www.face...ngton/500065899
Not sure about how I feel about FB potentially charging for vanity URLs…although I guess I could somewhat equate it to registering a domain name.
its going to be lame as hell if they try to charge for this shit
Hi Facebook,
I’ll give you 1000 for Facebook.com/alex and 100 for Facebook.com/alexwilhelm. 10 for Facebook.com/alex_wilhelm
Hm, 1000 in what currency?
Ugandan Dollars?
LMFAO XD
I would personally prefer if they made people pay for this. even at $5/year. or a smart move would be charge $5, but then seed those users accounts with $5 in credits (50) to use in the ecosystem. Free way to jumpstart the payments platform with funds.
Agree; I’d pay for it (ideally, a one-time, not a yearly lease). That would separate the people who are serious about consistent branding across social media outlets from folks who’d register something “just because”.
agreed.
Wow one of my friends actually had a good idea!
Hopefully I’ll get mine when they launch, but I do see them charging via the Pay With Facebook service.
The number of members who have similar names on FB must be immense, so paying a premium might stem the landrush somewhat.
Ahhh FInally! Can we Vanity our Pages too?
There is already a 3rd party providing this service. You can have http://profile.to/whatever point to your Facebook profile. Or you can use any other URL shortener of your choice.
Raphael, SocialToo.com also provides this, as do a few others.
I guess I’m lucky my mom gave me this funky made up name that people have trouble pronouncing.
I’ll be able to stop using shortlinks to my facebook page and profile.
and of course I love free….
I think I will get jelie as mine!
That is my nickname, so we’ll see
This is great! Much easier to remember than the user id numbers. Now I won’t have to go look it up whenever I want to link to my Facebook page directly
Instead of opening up this vanity url feature to all users why not just offer it as a premium service so only those willing to pay for it will have it.
my name is Mark =(
facebook.com/jesus, this is GOING to be hard
facebook.com/richard hopefully I can get it!
They could sell the first 5 million at like 20$ to encourage a better audience to get the better names (you wouldnt want users with 3 friends to take up one word names) while also raising a free 100m – then open up to everyone. And nevertheless they should make businesses pay for their names on a recurring basis.
The term “vanity url” is offensive. It judges people as vain for having or wanting an easier url. I’d like my Facebook url to be easier than a bunch of numbers but that does NOT make me vain, something I’m definitely not. I don’t want it for vanity purposes, but for convenience. Let’s lose the “vanity url” and call it something else, like “personalized url” for example instead.
I’m glad to see http://facebook.com/ari is already taken. OK, I’m not glad. But it is merely a pointer to http://www.face...?&id=211031 — I thought the vanity url would remain focused; is that an option down the road?
I’m with Andrea and others who commented that this would make sense to be a paid feature. By making it free, aka a landrush, it will be over moments after it begins.
This is great news, thanks for the article, Mike.
I believe Facebook will not charge individual users but will charge Companies for vanity/personalized URL’s.
Of equal importance is whether Facebook cracks down on unofficial Public Profiles / fan pages aka pizza, sex, hugs, and the recently sold to OraCare “kisses” Page. What do you think about this, Mike?