Loyal Moses

Facebook’s digital real estate frenzy

Posted on 12 June 2009

If you are a Facebook’r (which I am not), then you have no doubt heard of, or have already staked a claim on a vanity URL.

However, for those who may have just joined Facebook for a vanity URL after hearing of the announcement, you are completely out of luck! … well, for the next two weeks anyway.

Eligibility is limited to anyone who joined Facebook before usernames were publicly announced at 3 p.m. (EDT) on June 9, 2009. These users will have the chance to claim usernames at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009.

This limitation is temporary. All users who joined Facebook after the cut-off will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.

Direct link to the Facebook help topic

Apparently, the reasoning is to prevent people from creating new accounts just to take advantage of reserving a username.

Hmmm… I would have guessed that a marketing and media campaign to release a hugely popular new feature was designed specifically to gather more users and gain additional market share. But, as I said above I don’t use Facebook and this might have contributed to me being completely wrong here.

Of course, I’m not completely dense. I understand their intentions in wanting to provide current users with a generous amount of time in which to take advantage of the vanity URL’s before all of those dirty rotten username squatters show up.

Regardless, it sounds a bit silly to me.

~moses