That’s this right Friday night at the stroke of midnight (technically Sat 12am) the Facebook username (and URL) landrush will begin. Users will be able to register their http://facebook/……. (fill in the blank) usernames which will also include a Facebook URL, just like myspace. Each registered Facebook account can reserve one username/URL.
Of course there will be the idiotic “facebook squatters” that register an account or multiple accounts just to grab the facebook.com/….. name of a famous person, company, etc. Thinking they are going to be sitting on a gold mine, these fools will be generalized in the same category as “domain name cyber squatters”. Of course this shines a negative light on the domain industry as a whole.
[EDIT] I took this excerpt from the Facebook FAQ page:Eligibility is limited to anyone who joined Facebook before usernames were publicly announced at 3 p.m. (EDT) on June 9, 2009. These users will have the chance to claim usernames at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009.
This limitation is temporary. All users who joined Facebook after the cut-off will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.
So it seems the only users with accounts older than a week old will be able to reserve their usernames. New accounts must wait until June 28th – This will give a delayed period until the ‘squatters’ and new Facebook users can get their usernames. Good idea IMO.
I hope I am wrong but with as big as Fb has become I think this could get pretty ugly. I found an article on Business Insider that provides some tips on how to protect your brand in this situation.
Facebook Username Announcement
It’s official now. Facebook has surpassed Myspace as the largest social networking site:
http://stuff.techwhack.com/6779-facebook-myspace-usa
I got my desired name …i am happy with it. Hope they will provide more features in future too.
I think social networking is still in infancy and we will be seeing many more features in future. I could not get the desired name of mine. Though face book is bigger than myspace in USA, it differs from country to country. In Europe myspace is popular and in Brazil and India Orkut is having more users than facebook.
Ah! I wasn’t on Facebook then :(. I did register now, But I cant register my url until tomorrow. Why didn’t I join earlier!
Facebook should have done this earlier. But still , its better late then never. Honestly , i didn’t know about this till now. Have not log on to my facebook account for about a month now. Anyway , good move by facebook and thanks for sharing this.
Even though I got by vanity url I still don’t understand why facebook didn’t sell these url, they could have made a bucket load of money.
Facebook is burning through cash every month with no business model and whilst membership is increasing, the valuation of facebook is decreasing.
I’m still happy I got my vanity url tho !
I got my username but bad thing is once you have you cannot go back but still good to have usernames!
I don’t think this will be a huge hit unlike mySpace but good they done it!
Nice information.
In my opinion its wrong to have such a system as because if we are waiting for a user name which someone else had alredy requested its just a waste of time.
Hope they would make changes.
When I joined fb back in 2007 (I think it was 2007…) I was very surprised it didn’t already have this feature. I’m pleased to see that, two years later, it has been implemented.
Now all it needs is openid login, FOAF file support, hCard and XFN support, as well as half a dozen other little microformats to allow smart browsers (and any other programs) to truly interact with it.