So, Facebook has started the countdown to the launch of its new ‘vanity URL’ feature, which opens for mayhem this Saturday at 12.00am EDT. The concept is a simple one that will allow every user to choose a name (with a minimum of five characters) and create a personalised link to their profile or fan page.
This is all very well, and will inevitably create an immense rush of traffic to the site (I’m sure they’ve done some kind of performance testing in preparation), but is there a process in place to stop John Smith from getting annoyed that his name has been taken, and taking someone else’s identity?
The screenshots doing the rounds clearly show a ‘pick your own’ box (see the photo above, taken from Facebook's blog), which begs the question; just how much are people going to be spending to fight this out and preserve their own, or their brand's name?
Yes, Facebook says that it reserves the right to ‘remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason’ and will work with brands to prevent users from claiming trademarked terms. Apparently, this will allow them differentiate 'real' Facebook profiles and pages from potential ‘imposters’ (even though many of these would most likley be die-hard fans).
There are a few businesses positioning themselves to capitalise on the potential situation above. Case in point; Crederity, a web-based trust building company that offers online ID and credential verification to ‘people powered companies’ (as opposed to those robot-powered ones I suppose).
As more people sign up for this service, they will be striving for a sense of unique identity, and Crederity (I want to say ‘Credentity’) will help them to verify their profiles to create unique Facebook identities. I wonder how many will be taken in by this offering though, as it doesn’t actually matter if you are who you say are – you can pick whatever name you like. Sounds like jumping on the bandwagon to me.
Anyway, as I've said, regulations state that your chosen pick must be five letters or over, use alphanumeric characters only (plus a period or full stop) and that you can only pick one username per profile or page. That means that anyone with names of only two, three or four letters, well, you’ll have to make something up.
On top of the ‘free for all’ grabbing issues that don’t really seem fair (better to give people a choice based on the name they registered with, surely?) and the fact that the character limitation is ever so annoying for a large percentage of the world, I’m amazed they aren’t charging for this.
Given how many people spend money on virtual gifts through Facebook, there must be millions of users that would spend a small amount for a one-off purchase cost, or even perhaps a yearly subscription? This would most certainly apply to brands and those that use the network for self-promotion.
The fact that Facebook has decided not to put a fee against this feature suggests to me that they are more than aware that this is just another catch up feature. And not just to Twitter (the recent ‘new look’ including super short status updates was the first step towards that) but MySpace, Linked In and others that have allowed you to edit your own URL for years. It’s really nothing revolutionary.
It will however, be interesting to see how this unfolds and if the ability to consolidate various networks and services into one single ID ever becomes a reality. Ideally, we should be able to use one singular address and use an OpenID model for a true ‘merged’ identity. But for now at least, that’s just asking too much.