FaceBook Vanity Urls and the Losers…
Myles Agnew | Jun 20, 2009 | Comments 5
Last week facebook did a very cool people friendly thing by releasing vanity urls.
Which allow you to find people more easily ie http://www.facebook.com/mylesagnew
Now this is fantasic for me becuase there are only 3 other Myles Agnew’s on the planet so I had 33% chance of getting that name and to be honest the onther guy’s aren’t really interested in the internet so it was easy.
Then you have people that have the same name say “John Smith” for example imagine how many people with that name would have been trying to get it.
Then comes here comes the losers..
(You can’t have winners without losers it’s impossible!)
John Reese didn’t get his name http://www.facebook.com/johnreese Some wierd Facebook Profile did.
Jason Moffat didn’t get http://www.facebook.com/jasonmoffatt apparently Jake Smith beat him to the punch
Then Jason proceeded to winge and wine about his failure to register on his blog..
My profile has been jacked by some dickhead named Jake Smith. My buddy John Reese got his snatched too. Same with Frank Kern
(Actually Frank Kern isn’t registered or has been deregistered)
A vanity URL looks like this http://www.facebook.com/jasonmoffatt (which I should be the rightful owner of).
I’ve sent Facebook a message and sent the squatter a message. Hopefully it will be rectified soon. If not, I’m thinking of going Tony LaRussa on them as this is pure bullshit they allowed this to happen so easily.
Actually Jason doesn’t own the domain facebook.com nor do they, (Facebook) they lease the right to it by paying a yearly subscription to a registrar. As for the name Jason Moffat I’m pretty sure that’s not a Trademarked name and there is probably more than one Jason Moffatt in the world.
Some Winners!
Joel Comm http://www.facebook.com/joelcomm
Brad Semp http://www.facebook.com/bradsemp
First Vanity Name Transfer
(That I know of anyway)
Special mention to Chef Patrick who registered http://www.facebook.com/problogger and requested facebook to transfer it to fellow Aussie Darren Rowse of http://www.problogger.net fame.
Chef Patrick is true domainer and gentleman, and just by this action of make sure Darren was able to use the vanity is true display of Chef Patrick’s charactor and business ethics, some that alot of domainers are missing.
So there you go, Facebook vanity urls used and abuse by people what are your thoughts?
Feel Free to Leave a comment
It’s appears to be a hot topic at the Warrior Forums
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/93293-anybody-else-have-their-facebook-vanity-url-squatted.html#post897152
First of all, you can’t legally trademark a personal name. So no luck there.
Secondly, if another Jason Moffatt had registered the name first, you wouldn’t of heard a word from me. I would of graciously accepted that another Jason was quicker on the draw then me.
But that’s not the case. What has happened is some schmuck has squatted on my name. Call that whining if you want, but I take my reputation seriously and don’t enjoy letting others tarnish it by pretending to be me.
The vanity URL serves NO PURPOSE for this Jake Smith and Facebook should recognize this. And if you can’t understand that, then I’m truly puzzled. It’s a pretty cut and dry issue and doesn’t take a genius to recognize what happened was wrong.
Thanks Jason I appreciate your comments..
Let’s be honest Jake Smith has no idea what he/she is doing.
Because if you where going to sell or monetise the facebook vanity url you use the vanity url on a GROUP. Becuase the group can change admin owners and it’s the only way I know that you could “transfer” such a name without the hassle of asking facebook and also add affiliate links product review etc etc to monetise, it’s a no brainer.
Currently http://facebook.com/yourname (don’t want to give him anymore traffic than he needs) is going to a locked user profile named Jake Smith when I first clicked on the url and saw the page I though “That was pointless”.
I can’t see how this Jake Smith is going to make money off your reputation, when he can’t transfer/redirect the name and his profile doesn’t relate. I can see your point that facebook is responsible for letting him registering the name in the first place but to be honest I can’t see Jake Smith be unable to do anything with the url.
I lost my facebook name to a grade 10 student of same name in the USA. So I don’t mind, since it’s a valid person of same name that took it. You have to be quick and I was 10 hours late to the draw.
I don’t use my personal facebook account for my internet marketing anyway so I’m not really fussed. Just would have been nice.
Glad I have my domain name, and all my kids have their domain names, that’s the important thing.
Aaron
Pretty good post. I just found your site and wanted to say
that I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!