Facebook is finally making the move to usernames. Until now, your Facebook profile page URL has been something like this:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=712594733
Not exactly easy to remember, but then again, it's pretty easy to go Facebook and search for a friend by name. Still, having a simple profile URL makes any social media site more usable. Starting on Saturday, June 13th, at 12:01am, you'll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to more easily direct people to your profile. Then you'll have a URL that goes like this: http://facebook.com/yourusername.
For profile pages, this should be a fairly easy conversion (although the typical glitches are expected). You just need to visit facebook.com/username to set up your username. Only numbers, letters, and periods are allowed.
If you have a fan page, there are a few caveats. Your fan page must have at least 1,000 fans and have been created before 5/31/09. While I understand the reasoning behind this requirement (squatters), Facebook does face a challenge in dealing with legitimate brands and companies that have less than 1,000 fans. For a more in-depth discussion of the issue, check out this article (and the comments) at Mashable. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Loading ...
Thanks for the notice Shannon. I'm not a huge fan of Facebook, but since some of my friends prefer it to Twitter, I'd like to keep all of my sites consistent.
Thanks for the info!
I got my name as the username.
You don't need 1,000 Fans to get your own username.
Your Facebook account must be registered before June 9 as the only criteria.
Mike
Right. For *profile* pages, you can get a user name, but if you have a FAN page, you need 1,000 fans. This is an important distinction.
This is helpful! Thanks. Can you have TWO?