On Friday, June 12, millions of existing Facebook users may find that their chosen username is not available. This post explains how to find out what are your chances of preserving your Facebook username past Friday, June 12.
Three days before Facebook implements usernames, it’s interesting to note that Facebook managed to become a dominant social platform without them*. Facebook’s minimal approach – just email and password – proves it’s perfectly feasible to ID users without a username as such. As an ID device, “Usernames” should be relegated to the history books, in the pre-email era of multi-user mainframes and corporate networks employing offline slaves.
However, the Facebook username feature is not about security – rather it is about vanity (i.e. community identity and personalized URLs). Facebook invites you to regard your Facebook profile as your home page, complete with its own speakable URL, such as facebook.com/username. One issue to be discussed here is the frustration of Facebook users who share the same first and last name with other Facebook users (probably a frequent occurrence in a universe as large as Facebook). What to do if your name is taken by someone else? Make up your mind before the race for Facebook usernames begins this Friday, June 12, 9:01 PM.
The technological effort involved pales in comparison with the marketing challenge. Facebook lines up its millions of users to race with each other instead of assigning usernames to its membership, not just because arbitrary assignment runs against the concept of vanity – but because it can’t. An arbitrary, automated conversion of real names to usernames will make one johnsmith happy but expose Facebook to more flag burning, not to mention litigation coming from the other 555 “johnsmith“s out there (see below). Besides, since usernames are not changeable once selected, a forced conversion will leave the real nice names (such as facebook.com/pretty, or business names) to future users only.
Whatever Facebook does, many users will end up unhappy, not having the usernames they hoped for, feel entitled to, and/or were born with. Facebook asks you to choose a name because it does not want to be forced to decide which John Smith gets the johnsmith username and the resulting http://www.facebook.com/johnsmith “Facebook domain”. In the Facebook blog, Facebook’s Blaise DiPersia gives a preview of the alternative-name-choosing interface – preparing you now for the disappointment when you find out your desired name is taken:
Come Friday, 9 AM, how many people that share your name will want to grab the username first? Example: My Google search reveals that come Friday, 9 AM, up to 556 contestants may be ready at their keyboards to claim johnsmith. Try Googling this to find your contestants:
Site:www/facebook.com intitle”firstname lastname”
On Friday, June 12, your Facebook username may be hijacked – by someone with your own name. Oh, and another prediction: on Friday, 9:02, the market opens for Facebook domain names… I mean usernames.
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Notes:
* “Real names”, which Facebook does collect, do not count because they are not used for identification and can’t serve Facebook for URL customization
