OK, so at 5.01 am on the 13th of June i was awake sitting infront of my machine like a lemon, attempting to get the Facebook Vanity URL of my dreams (/kunal). Unfortunately it had already been taken (by a Facebook employee, obviously). So I settled for firstnamelastname. So fine. Got that. Now what?

Exactly. It’s not going on a business card or email footer (thats what Twitter and LinkedIn URL’s are for). As the name suggests, its vain thing to do. As i’ve seen on various Facebook status updates yesterday, people are updating their new vanity URL yet seriously, what is the point on advertising your Facebook URL to people who are on your Facebook? *ahem* uber vain.

However.

There is real sense for brands to make use of their Facebook fan pages by having an easy to remember URL – the online and offline traffic potential is very appealing. Facebook have attempted to put some measures into place to stop people trying to take these brand URL’s (the account should have been made earlier than the 9th of June, and you need more than 1000 fans!?). Hard – especially if you’re a semi small brand. Actually, hard if you’re a big brand trying to start things up on the social sites – especially when other people have set up unofficial fan pages that have already built up hundreds or thousands of fans. I believe Facebook will open this restriction up on the 28th of June but by then it will be too late – most names of any use would have been taken up. /PaulSmith was taken up by a guy who has the same name as the British designer – trademarking becomes a harder issue when a person’s name is involved!

Overall.

Facebook vanity URLs should be prioritised to fan pages, not profile pages. Checks should be in place to verify true brands to simply make it fair. A bit like how Twitter recently set up verification on profiles. When LinkedIn did the equivalent vanity URL thing it was easier since it was profile based.