The big deal the last few days has been Facebook offering users the opportunity to get their own unique “vanity” names for their Facebook profile URL. Granted a short, meaningful URL is a better way to go, but is this really that big of a deal?
I guess I’m just not sure what the big deal is at this point. Yes obviously there’s an advantage for me to have www.facebook.com/jasonlbean instead of https://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502473549. But, awhile back I setup www.bnpositive.com/facebook that automatically redirects to my Facebook URL. I think this method is better than the other to because I can also now gauge how many people are visiting my Facebook profile from a link on my own homepage. If I promote my Facebook profile with this same link, then I capitalize on the popularity of the site and I’m able to track it.
The caveat to this is that this is really only an option for those users on Facebook that have their own domain in the first place. I guess I keep forgetting that there’s a whole lot of people not like me. Facebook may be their only real presence on the web.