The Facebook Vanity URL Fiasco
At the stroke of midnight on Friday, June 12 (technically Saturday at 12:01 AM EST), geeks all around the world will frantically login to Facebook with the attempt to land as many great vanity URLs as they can. Unsuspecting businesses around the world will think they have nothing to fear. Or do they?
There is an enormous flaw with the Facebook vanity URL registration. If you intend to register your company’s vanity URL, there is a very good chance you won’t be able to. Unless your company had a Facebook page setup prior to May 31, 2009 AND has at least 1,000 fans, you will not be eligible to claim your vanity URL during the first round of registration (the second round begins June 28, 2009).
On the flipside, if you are Joe Schmoe with a dummy profile account, you can grab that same company vanity URL, no questions asked. Unless a company has registered with Facebook to prevent the registration of their business name, the vanity URL is up for grabs. Facebook of course made it so you can’t fill out their prevention ticket, unless they provided you with a registration number to do so. I know what you’re thinking, “I’ll just have my company signup for a Facebook profile and grab it.” Wrong. Facebook does not allow companies to setup profiles, only pages. And that is where this horrible fiasco will begin.
Thousands of great brand names will be available for users to grab, because so few companies actually have over 1,000 fans. And what about the companies that have over a dozen Facebook pages setup by fans that have exceeded the 1,000 fan requirement? Take Audi, for example. There are 8 Audi Facebook pages eligible to register the vanity URL /audi/. What happens if it is a “hate” account? Twilight has a fan page called “Twilight Sucks” with over 3,000 fans. They are going to be eligible to grab the vanity URL for Twilight because they meet all of Facebook’s requirements.
Although Facebook says vanity URLs are permanent and can’t be transfered, they do reserve the right to remove the vanity URL from you. There are always loop holes, of course. Take a company like SAS for example. You could create a Facebook profile with the name Sarah Ann Stevens and claim the vanity URL /sas/. It would be hard for SAS to make a valid claim to Facebook when the person who registered it was only using their initials. And just like that a Fortune 500 company vanity URL is gone.
Your last line of defense is to fill out an Intellectual Property Infringement claim. We all know how big of a pain it is to reclaim Twitter accounts, do you really think Facebook will be any better?
Update: The registration number is your registered trademark number. My SAS example is invalid b/c the URL must be five characters long.
Taylor Pratt is a Search Marketing Specialist at nFusion. You can follow him on Twitter.
Filed under: Facebook, Social Media
Great article – this is what we are currently facing with some of our larger clients at KnowEm a state of panic.
I have basically spent my day attempting to calm some of them.
It is going to be an interesting weekend.
Wow, I didn’t even think about these issues. I too will be up at midnight to claim my personal name but wasn’t too worried about my company name (not a big brand anyway). However, still possible that a competitor could snatch it up…
I met someone from Facebook at SMX last week – now if only I could remember her name to get a registration number… =/
Do you know if the next round won’t have these same requirements?
> Facebook of course made it so you can’t fill out their prevention ticket, unless they provided you with a registration number to do so.
I believe the registration number they ask for is the trademark registration # from the USPTO.
I think it’s worth mentioning too that if you fill out that form it prevents your company from grabbing the vanity URL as well. At least, that’s how I understand the information they’ve put out about that form.
@gregg hilferding
After looking at it again I agree that they’re looking for the trademark registration number. I was digging around for ours but now you’ve got me scared about your second point…
In short, their instructions aren’t very clear and of course there is no customer service – can’t afford that when you don’t have a real business model… Even if you’re a paid advertiser on Facebook, they only have a small crew of about half a dozen people that serve that pool…
Ooohhh awesome article Taylor!! You very clearly identify the ridiculousness of this launch. You are awesome
@whoisgregg – I guess the USPTO is a USA thing? I wonder what other countries need to do.
That’s a great point, Gregg. I’ve been trying to get confirmation on the registration number but haven’t heard back from my contact there. I’ll keep you all posted if I hear anything.
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I agree it may turn into a fiasco, but the stated registration process is being… well understated. Businesses, brands, bands, and celebrities have had the opportunity to secure vanity URLs prior to this:
see: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afacebook.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
All you need is the next great world disaster and watch the opportunistic wannabes come flooding in with some ridiculous urls.. Link farms here we come.
@Brandon – but that is an invite only list. What about everyone who isn’t a fortune 500? It’s just as important for the medium and small sized businesses to have an opportunity, as well.
@Pratt – I’m not sure they are all fortune 500, but pointing out it is an invite list is a good point. I think the combination of registration date and amount of fans coupled with trademark registration or username removal based on trademarks is a good failsafe for large and small businesses alike… as long as they are paying attention.
Thanks for the post. I kept thinking that I had to have missed something. It just couldn’t be right that I couldn’t reserve my company’s name, but some goof-ball with an ax to grind could scoop it up without any trouble. But, alas, you have confirmed my fears. The process really is that stupid.
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I agree. I’m also interested in seeing what everyone’s experience is, so I’ve created a stream of tweets featuring the #fburlparty tag. If you tweet about Facebook URLs, use this tag and see the stream here, http://bit.ly/10xK1W.
This is going to be a nightmare for a lot of companies. I know I will be online tonight doing my best to grab what I can.
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Gack! Please, they’re not “vanity” urls! Just because a person would rather have a url with words instead of a bunch of random freaking numbers does not make that person vain! Let’s get rid of that offensive term and call it “personalized url” instead. Is that so hard for people to do?