mway’s blog

All throughout history, humanity has largely revolved around recognition.  As time passes, we have little left to remind us of past ages, save what monuments (figurative and literal) have been established by our deeds… or something like that.

Facebook, though, seems to think that a name in itself is quite enough, if only it were repeated 12 times on the same page for everyone to remember it:

Don’t get me wrong, I like my name – this, though, is a little overkill. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked if Facebook offset the organic search rankings of personal websites. Just in case you didn’t know: my name is Matt Way, and I am on Facebook.

Anyway, at 12AM EST last night, Facebook launched the vanity URL feature, where users could use usernames in their Facebook URLs instead of profile.php?id=506358811.  Within 15 minutes, 200,000 users chose URLs.  Within an hour, over half a million people used this feature.  The process is so simple that I was able to do it drunk, standing outside of a bar in Brooklyn at 12:09AM EST (I love you, Google G1 phone).

With the addition of vanity URLs, though (which I’m still bitter about, because ‘mway’ is too short – cut me some slack here, I can’t help that I have a short name), users can now gain that clutch 13th name drop on Facebook pages (when visitors are not logged in).  Psychologists (et al) say that if something is repeated, what, 5 times, you’re bound to remember it – hell, Facebook felt that almost tripling that was a good way to make sure that our names live forever in the memories of search engines.

So, if you haven’t yet, go to http://www.facebook.com/username/, pick a Facebook username/vanity URL, and ensure a little bit of e-immortality.