The Number One Reason The Great Facebook Name Grab Rocked.

Why did the Great Facebook Name Grab rock? It’s more than those 3 million new vanity URLS.

Could it be the 200,000 usernames registered in the first 3 minutes? That’s an amazing 1111 names registered per second, according to the geeks at Mashable, who are much better at math than moi.

Could it be that by 10:01 PM PT, only one frenzied hour after Nerd Night launched, around one million custom URLs had already been nabbed?

Could it be the smooth way it all went down, with nary a bump or crash, despite record traffic?

Or could it be that I got MY vanity URL, beating out legions of pesky Sarah Browne poseurs, porn stars and Prime Minister’s wives?

Nope.  While the above milestones are delightfully droolworthy, the Number One Reason the Great Facebook Name Grab rocked was because we finally had some fun with Social Media again. 

Or haven’t you noticed it’s been stone-cold sober and Provigil-serious in Social Media Land lately? 

But Friday eve, at the appointed witching hour, Geeks galore were gleefully proclaiming their name grabs, tweeting about their victories and it wasn’t all about SEO, boosting Friends/Follows or shameless self-promotion. Yes, there is business benefit in ‘owning’ your Facebook personal URL; so yes, it was smart to spend part of your Friday night clicking, crowing and claiming your name. It also was a blast.

Look no further for proof of this newfound wit and wackiness than this list of Goofy Usernames just nabbed:

• Starting my world domination plans early: http://www.facebook.com/yourlordandmaster
• Cat ran over my keyboard:
  http://www.facebook.com/alksjfalskjfoiwefalsdlasfaslleseouaiwejndlsknjkdfs
• The entire QWERTY keyboard:
  http://www.facebook.com/qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm
• Try harder: http://www.facebook.com/aaaaaa
• Fantasyland: http://www.facebook.com/JackBauercouldwhoopChuckNorris
• Someone who actually wantsto be the customer service guy?http://www.facebook.com/techsupport
• Don’t even ask:  http://www.facebook.com/dballs
• My personal favorite: http://www.facebook.com/rickroll

Guru’s Nudge: Small businesses on Facebook — remember June 28. That’s when you can nab your business vanity URL.

Thanks again to Mashable.

The Great Facebook Name Grab Is Hours Away.

If you’ve logged on to your Facebook Profile anytime in the past week, you can’t miss the drumroll-please message. In a matter of hours, starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, Facebook is (finally) letting users pick their own Facebook profile usernames on a first-come, first-serve basis. Sure, this technology has long been standard at MySpace, Twitter and Linkedin but with Facebook’s exploding growth, personalizing your Facebook URL smartly ups your personal brand presence. Plus, these enhancements mean an end to that Facebook.com/26537215 numerical gobbledygook and the beginning of a faster, easier way for your peeps to be able to find you online. Here’s what the Facebook blog says about the new vanity URLS:

“Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.”

See you tonight on Facebook where I’ll be mightily scrapping with legions of other Sarah Brownes. I got name-jacked on Twitter and if you saw what the current @SarahBrowne was tweeting, you too would be chomping at the bit in this FB Great Name Grab. (Follow me @guruofnew)

Are You A Small Business with a Facebook Page? If So, Good News!
There’s been a lot of confusion about eligibility for usernames for Facebook Pages. Originally, Facebook would only allow Pages created before May 31, 2009 with a minimum of 1,000 fans to be eligible for the vanity URLS. After Admins of Small Business Pages rightfully complained, (me!) even forming a Facebook protest group, the powers-that-be in Palo Alto relented.

So remember this date: Sunday, June 28. On this date, “All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28.

If you have more than 1,000 fans and the Page was live on Facebook prior to the cut-off date of May 31, 2009, then go for it on June 13 along with your personal Profile.

Guru’s Note: Please check the Facebook blog for Page eligibility updates. Rules and dates keep changing as often as Heidi and Spencer exit the jungle.