Professional SEO | Internet Marketing

David Beckham was one of the first, along with Britney Spears and Donald Trump. Even companies like McDonald's and Puma jumped on the bandwagon.

They all were among the nearly 6 million Facebook users who registered a vanity URL with the social-networking Web site over the weekend.

At the stroke of midnight Saturday, Facebook allowed its members to sign up for unique names for their profiles on a first-come, firstserved basis.

Half a million people signed on within the first 15 minutes, and 5.75 million user names were taken by the end of Sunday, Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said, adding that the technical staff was prepared for the flood of traffic.

"It's rewarding to see the level of excitement about getting a Facebook user name. It goes to show just how connected Facebook has become to people's sense of identity," he said.

According to the company's blog, the purpose is to make it easier to find and remember users' profiles. With the feature, users can exchange the lengthy
string of numbers in their URLs for simpler, catchier terms. For example, now you can visit President Obama's Facebook profile at facebook.com/barackobama.

UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Coye Cheshire, who researches social-exchange environments, wasn't surprised by the rush to compete for a piece of virtual real estate.

"If Facebook continues to be the premier social-networking utility, then vanity URLs very well could be as important for individuals as domain names are for organizations and companies," he said.

Celebrities and athletes like Ashton Kutcher (facebook.com/Ashton) and Kobe Bryant (facebook.com/Kobe) already have registered their online profiles, but others also were quick to take on the names of the famous.

For example, a Philadelphia woman registered as TimLincecum, after the San Francisco Giants pitcher, while a San Francisco man took aplusk, Ashton Kutcher's well-known Twitter handle.

In an effort to prevent cyber squatters, the company allows users to fill out forms to bar others from registering their trademarks. Members also can contest registered user names through an intellectual property infringement form. Yu stressed that the company owns every user name and "can assign or restrict them as we see fit."

"We're carefully working through the submissions we received and will share more details in the near future. Regardless, the structure currently in place is designed to discourage squatting since user names are not transferable and only one user name can be assigned to a given page or user profile," Yu said.

After the weekend rush to the new service, the demand for the vanity URLs has quieted down.

Thomas Ralston, 26, a cook in San Francisco, said he had heard of the feature but was in no hurry to register.

"I haven't cared enough to go, 'Oh man, I've got to do this immediately,' but I'm sure I'll get around to it," he said.

via http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/16/BU5Q187SL0.DTL