I had to settle for a second-rate vanity URL. But I don’t care.
At the stroke of midnight last night thousands of techies were sitting at their computers trying to get a crack at the ideal vanity Facebook URL, such as FaceBook.com/name. I was well aware of this URL landrush but opted to sit on the sidelines. Why? Ironically, because I was socially networking.
The difference is I was being social in person. I’m in Washington D.C. and was at a bar with my college roommate and his girlfriend. At the stroke of midnight I could have fumbled with my phone to try to logon to Facebook, or I could have insisted on running back to the apartment to jump online.
But wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? The idea of social networking is to connect with friends and colleagues. Sometimes this online connecting gets in the way of real connections. Facebook has had a tremendous effect on how we stay in touch with friends new and old. Yet it seems that it also relegates our connections to insensitive, unmeaningful interactions. It reminds me of the time one of my wife’s friends sent a bulk text message to many of her friends on a holiday telling them how much they mean to her.
I logged on to Facebook when I got back to the apartment last night. My first choice of vanity URL wasn’t available. But that’s less important than spending time with old friends.
M. Menius says
MySpace, Facebook, Linked In, Tweeter, the next one. I think the world is chasing its own tail.
Travis says
Sorry, where’s your “like” button?
Madhav Tripathi says
Yes it was day in India, and I ws also at my pc for this purpose and I got one for me no one has taken it because I was very quick. But is not good day for few of peoples.
John says
Good point.
Facebook like Myspace allows someone to create a website without having to do any work.
The “Social Network” is a collection of pictures of other peoples faces.
And no, that does not constitute a real network, but it is a collection of people’s faces.
Anthony Mitchell says
The best idea for a Facebook ID comes from Justin Hayward of Telnic, who uses his .tel domain as his Facebook ID: http://www.facebook.com/justin.tel
Makes it simple to remember and easy to transcend from Facebook’s walled garden out into the wilds of online ID management in general, but with ID management consolidated on Justin.tel where it only has to be updated once.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Anthony, I think the point of .tel is that it doesn’t matter hat your Facebook URL is. You’re just going to tell people to go to mydomain.tel. Same thing goes if you own your own name as a domain.
jp says
for some reason it only offered me http://profile.to/vanityname
Did anyone else experience this? I would much rather have facebook.com/vanityname
Huy says
If you are the webmaster and want to use social networking services such as facebook.com, myspace.com, or twitter.com but the vanity url has been taken by someone else, you still have the chance to have the good URL by make your website url like this:
company-domain.com/facebook redirected to facebook.com/company
company-domain.com/myspace redirect to myspace.com/company
…
Dave says
Lol, well, i reckon you buy your own domain and you can create whatever folder you want, the whole landrush thing on facebook is just silly, really, you should have your own domain and link to these sites from it and from these sites back to your domain – it doesnt matter what the folder on these sites is, if you’re cheapskate enough not to have a domain then maybe..
eric says
twiiter facebook and the other junk the right personnes and allow Spam! keep cool, in a time there’ll be only one real user of this site: Google .
Bybye, Eric
Xavier Blake says
But now days it doesn’t happen at all. Facebook has improved from every end.
Though they do not care much about privacy, it has solid security features
Nickk says
Thanks to god, that I’ve got the Facebook’s url for my account