Good news ladies and gentlemen. Looks like Facebook has learned a thing or two from rival Myspace and has decided to start giving out vanity URL’s…some day. No word on when the rest of us outside of the super-famous and outrageously-special realm will get to have our own, but it looks like Facebook is getting more serious by every celebrity that signs a contract with them.
WTF is a vanity URL anyway? you may ask yourself. Well, my friend. A vanity URL, as my friend Michael Arrington reminded me, is a URL such as facebook.com/EliteEternity as opposed to my real URL which just happens to be: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1042853460&ref=name.
I want a vanity URL! But apparently I’m not super-cool enough yet.
I tried to find a way to get a vanity URL back in the future, and the only thing I could find was some cheap Facebook app that was super-spammy. In other words, it gave me my own URL alright, but it took the visitors to some page that had an ad on it before it would let them see my profile. Gimme’ a break.
People cool enough to have their own Facebook URL:
http://www.facebook.com/kevinrose
http://www.facebook.com/demimoore
http://www.facebook.com/ashtonkutcher
EDIT: P.S. You can make your own vanity URL by making a simple php redirect.
All you have to do is create a php file with the following code:
<?php
header( ‘Location: yoursitename.com’ ) ;
?>
Now, place that file on your server, and all you have to do is send your visitors to that URL (i.e. yoursite.com/fb, or fb.yoursite.com if you know how to make a subdomain) and you can avoid the ugly, long Facebook URL.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Vanity URLs are also good for FaceBook as more search engine traffic for a person or band or company’s name will get to them.
yeah tiny-fb.com has been doing that for facebook users for ages. creates your own tiny-fb.com/yourname site for your facebook account. makes it easier to twit, sms, email and randomly jot down your facebook details to people.