When Facebook’s Vanity URL landrush kicked off nearly two weeks ago, over 500,000 people registered their new names in a matter of 15 minutes. Over the following weekend, nearly 6 million users staked their claims. The most desirable names, like ‘Jason’ or ‘Mike’, were snapped up in a matter of seconds (if they weren’t already registered by a Facebook employee before the landrush even began). Needless to say, a lot of people were left in the dust, forced to settle for something other than the vanity URL they’d been dreaming of for weeks.
Well, if you’re a member of the unlucky masses, here’s your chance to get the name you’ve always wanted. Sort of.
Developer Alex Gonzalez of Branch Interactive has put together an application that will allow you to to generate a Facebook application in your name, giving you the URL apps.facebook.com/NAME. So instead of Facebook.com/jasonkincaid, I would be apps.Facebook.com/jasonkincaid. Sure, it has the four extra letters designating it as a Facebook application, but it’s hardly an eyesore.
Gonzalez’s application, which is called Personal URL, builds a basic secondary profile that can link to your online presences, including your main Facebook profile. At this point the options are very sparse, but if the application becomes popular Gonzalez plans to introduce more features.
Installing the application forces you to jump through a few hoops (the process is similar to the custom Quiz apps that keep popping up all over Facebook). First, you’ll have to install the Facebook Developer App and create a new application. Then you’ll have to copy and paste your API Key and Secret Key into the Personal URL app. This is all spelled out pretty clearly in the directions, but it’s not exactly user friendly.
So should you do it? The URL may be easy on the eyes, but it could also easily confuse anyone who tried to recall it from memory since normal vanity names don’t have the preceding ‘apps’ in front of their Facebook URL. There’s also a good chance Facebook is going to kill off the application entirely, and it may not be SEO friendly. Still, at least it’s a decent consolation prize for those that missed out on the great vanity landrush of ‘09.
I got my http://facebook.com/lambright but I have nothing valuable to say.
Very cool idea – look forward to see how many people take advantage of it.
I appended .now to my vanity url. http://facebook...m/matthyatt.now. Also just 4 extra characters, and less chance of confusion.
Even better would be for people to append “.com” to the end of their names.
agreed but it sort of looks funny… just a little bit.
whatever happened to using the tried and true 101 or 1154 number combination after your name?
facebook.com/matthyatt101 or 0001?
For me, I didn’t want my whole name, so I just got my last and I got it since I did it pretty early in the game. In hindsight I may have added my first name too but hey, its done.
This could have been done before the vanity URLs were introduced, and more importantly, doesn’t offer the advantages of the built-in system. When you get a vanity URL, that replaces *all* URLs relating to your account. All your posts on Facebook use it and incoming requests to your previous URL are redirected to the new one.
If you want to do this and not pollute the apps.facebook.com namespace with crap, someone should just register fbook.com and offer URLs off that domain. Or just register something like facebook-timdorr.com. Or use your own domain, a la facebook.timdorr.com or timdorr.com/facebook. There’s several ways to do this that are far far easier. But again, they all miss the big benefit of site integration.
Well said.
I knew trying to get Mike or Michael was going to be a bust, tried it anyway, no luck. Opted for something less generic. For unique last names, probably still lots of options available.
fbook.com is definitely not available, and would probably cost many thousands to register. If you could get people to pay $5 for a vanity redirect though maybe it would be worth the investment.
fbook.com is definitely not available, and would probably cost many thousands to register. If you could get people to pay $5 for a vanity redirect though maybe it would be worth the investment.
I think that would be worth a trademark infringement lawsuit, and that’s about it.
I’m still waiting for http://youtwitf...om/tannerpowell
You mean http://youtwitmyface.com/
At 12:00.10 I got my name – stephen.harris i am #1 (or #2) in google for my name – so was glad to nail this down. BUT why midnight on a friday night (east coast…geez).
as for these gimmicks – i think they will lose in the end.. no SEO, no real memory …. why didnt they try at midnight like the rest of us…
Uncool, really.
My name is so unique I got the one i wanted right away…
You might as well just call it http://facebook...m/apps-yourname or better yet, something other than ‘apps’.
Yeah, this app will survive the weekend…
crappy to the highest level! i believe part the idea of having a vanity url, other than it looks good when written/typed, is that so your friends can remember it easily. I mean why the heck would you want to confuse your friends with apps.facebook.com/jason and the other luckier guy at facebook.com/jason
scrap this and please go back to the drawing board.
Wonder why it needs the API and Secret? Anyone know?
I just added .fb, seems good enough.
facebook.com/andrewmichael.fb
Looks like they are doing there own landgrab. This morning I woke to find that they took back my vanityurl, no explanation given. It was /programs but still, they gave it up!
This is a dumb idea and only an idiot who doesn’t dev apps would think it is a good idea cause that URL is the same url apps canvas pages use.. http://apps.fac...com/webaddress/ is one that did the same thing, like a year ago.. without screwing over other apps… I am fine but now you are going to make it harder for apps to get a decent URL that will match there names.. It is not a good idea.. it is misleading.. and stupid..
Lame. Get your own domain and set up a redirect.
I am buzzbishop.com/facebook – I own my brand, not Zuckerberg.
word
nahhhh it’s not about the URL it’s about the fact that Facebook will be leveraging the identifier as a short hand/alias at some point.
won’t work with this
I’d love to hear some stats as to how many hits they actually have to the vanity’s versus people going to facebook.com and logging in. I got the one I wanted but have yet to hand it out and still just login to view updates, etc
fbuser.com is much better and simpler
just go for it
What a stupid idea, has the world gone vanity crazy or something…
Whats the big deal with this..