In a recent post, TechCrunch asks: where will you be at 9:01 pm PT this Friday? If you're a social media junkie, chances are you'll be on Facebook, registering your vanity URL. That's right; you'll now be able to access pages by typing in http://www.facebook.com/yournamehere.
Image care of the Facebook Blog
It's about time, Facebook! Even LinkedIn and MySpace were ahead of you on this one. Of course, to give everyone a fair chance at a unique username while playing social media catchup, Facebook has decided to open the floodgates wide at one specific time for everyone, meaning that everyone will be logging in and crashing the system on Friday night (that's when IT likes to work, right?). It should be an interesting battle over usernames, especially for smaller startups that need to stake a claim for their brands.
For people with "generic" names like mine, choosing a username is always a bit of a struggle--my first and last name combination are very common and most derivatives are already taken on most sites. To compromise, I've maintained my youthful AIM screen name for personal services and created a new, slightly-more professional username (@samrobsays) for online services I use for work. But what happens now that people (myself included) are increasingly using Facebook for professional purposes? Hmm, which name to choose...
I guess I'd better be ready to fight for my full name at 9:01 pm this Friday. http://www.facebook.com/SamanthaRobinson, here I come!
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