Your Facebook domain name
June 18th, 2009 | by Laurent FP |When Facebook recently announced that all of their 200 million registered users would be able to choose their own username on June 13th, most of us took it at face value. Great, I can now send a direct link to my profile with a simple URL!
Although this is already a great step from the very cumbersome numerical ID we had to link to previously, the rules Facebook applies to choose and suggest usernames bugged me. It’s very limiting, in fact, it may be even more restrictive as registering a new domain name. Only basic text, alphanumeric characters and a single period is allowed. This is quite different from the flexible names twitter and newer services offer.
Almost at the same time as the username announcement, there was quite a bit of talk around the opportunities the unrestricted gTLD introduces. There is no doubt established corporations will use those new TLD to reinforce their brands. We will see .facebook, .microsoft or .google.
Which raises the question, is Facebook preparing itself to provide a “shorter” URL to their 200 million members? Effectively giving everyone a direct access to their profile with a simple http://username.facebook or even with an unlikely http://username.fcbk.
Facebook has more chances to impose a new top level domain than anyone else, just by the number of people using them. They could effectively be seen as THE digital profile provider. Making it a great preemptive move for anyone else trying to do it (read… Google).
2 Responses to “Your Facebook domain name”
By jimbob54 on Jun 19, 2009 | Reply
I thought this was mostly about future email addresses, as in
blaise.dispersia@facebook.com
By Laurent FP on Jun 19, 2009 | Reply
It would make a lot of sense that they provide an email address, and as you mention, the username rules do relate perfectly to the usual localpart. This being said, I’m still wondering if they will effectively do it. Current message notification is the number one driver of members back to the site, providing an email system would imply that people could write to each other without going back onto Facebook. There is a dozen way they could make use of that address, without necessarily offering the next gmail.