facebook and urls

From MediaPost Publication --- Facebook To Offer Vanity URLs

by Mark Walsh, 5 hours ago

I've copied this article from MediaPost because it has really useful information that I have not seen in other articles about the personal or brand URLs that Facebook will offer on Saturday. Starting at midnight Eastern time on Saturday, Facebook's more than 200 million users will be able to personalize the URLs for their profiles, the company announced Tuesday. By rolling out so-called vanity URLs, the company aims to make it easier to find people and brands on Facebook via search engines, while potentially boosting its own traffic as well. Until now, a user's URL has just been a randomly assigned string of numbers. The new usernames for profiles and Facebook Pages will be offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. "Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names," according to a post on the Facebook blog by Blaise DiPersia. The move is expected to set off a land rush among individuals and businesses for the most desirable URLs. Already, hundreds of vanity URLs have been doled out to celebrities and other prominent people on Facebook such as President Obama (http://www.facebook.com/ barackobama), according to the Inside Facebook blog. Now marketers can also capitalize on the new URLs to drive traffic to their Facebook brand pages. But the company warns about choosing usernames carefully: "Once it's been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we've taken to prevent abuse or "squatting" on names. And only Pages with more than 1,000 fans before May 31 will be able to choose a vanity name. According to Inside Facebook, the company is also barring brand pages from choosing generic vanity URLs such as "pizza" or "flowers" and allowing rights holders to prevent their trademarks from being registered as usernames. To that end, it has created a form to request Facebook block use of a trademark in a URL. Not allowing users to change or transfer URLs is designed to thwart a black market from developing around usernames.

Branding Yourself

I first heard of personal branding over 10 years ago, long before this whole social networking trend took off. The mantra then was to decide how to differentiate yourself and then be consistent. That advice is still being given out today. It's advice well heeded.

In fact, the most important point of a long Knowledge@Wharton article on self branding (link below) is that you really need to brand yourself to get find employment, stay employed or have a successful business as a sole proprietor. These Wharton professors are still saying that you must also be consistent in your branding. Ask yourself these questions: What are you? What differentiates you? What value do you bring? Then, foster that image online and off.

Here's a link to the article - Advertising Yourself: Building a Personal Brand Through Social Networks.