UPDATE: An “on your mark, get set” announcement has been posted on the official Facebook Blog. According to designer Blaise DiPersia, it’ll be time to “go” at 12:01 AM (EDT) this Saturday, the 13th. DiPersia also provided the following screenshots if you’re curious about what the setup screen and end result should look like.
Original article: Generally speaking, it’s much easier to remember the name of a person or business than a random, nine- or ten-digit string of numbers. Everyone from teenage girls to career-oriented professionals should be happy to hear, then, that Facebook is supposed to make vanity URLs available in the near future.
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Thanks to this development, users should be able to register URLs like Facebook.com/YourNameHere. These addresses promise be the sorts of things folks can tell each other at parties or even print on business cards.
But the trick may be claiming Facebook.com/YourNameHere as opposed to Facebook.com/YourNameYourFavoriteColorYourFavoriteNumberHere. According to Michael Arrington, an announcement about the vanity URLs “should come sometime later this week. Afterwards, at a certain date and time, the landrush will begin.”
Also, don’t plan on being able to register generic words like “food” or the name of a company like Ford.
So keep your eyes and ears open for further details. The John Smiths of the world may want to stay especially sharp.
On a side note, any landrush should act as an interesting test of Facebook’s infrastructure. If the site stays up even while a huge percentage of users are playing with it at once, this’ll prove that the technical side of things is in pretty good shape.
