Not Everyone is Excited About Facebook Vanity URLs
Mega social network Facebook announced yesterday that it will make "vanity URLs" like Facebook.com/yourname available for users this Friday night. Many people were ecstatic; these links are scarce, they are free, they are Facebook and they have your name in them, after all. Visions of early domain name wealth may have been somewhere in many peoples' minds, too.
Not everyone is excited about the move, however; a number of critics are taking advantage of the opportunity to raise concerns about digital identity and user freedom online.
Most prominent among the critical voices is Chris Messina. Messina designed the Get Firefox ad that ran full page in the NYT years ago, kicking off that browser's adoption, co-founded the BarCamp global network of tech conferences, is on the OpenID Foundation Board and he's the leading mind behind the emerging Activity Streams data standard. All the big social media vendors listen up when he speaks about the web and yesterday he spoke loudly about Facebook vanity URLs.
Messina cites three other thinkers in his critique:
- Vanity URLs as anonymity. Messina: "If Dustin Moskovitz were dead, he'd be rolling over in his grave. For those of you who don't know who Dustin Moskovitz is, he's one of those infrequently mentioned co-founders of Facebook that prevented Facebook from offering usernames or friendly web addresses (so-called "vanity URLs" in the industry) from the beginning. It was his insistence that people should go by their real names on Facebook -- and should thus perform under their true identities -- that I posit has accounted for much of Facebook's success with non-digital natives."
- Vanity URLs as too much power for the vendor. Brian Oberkirch, after SXSW this year: "At one of the SXSW panels a few weeks ago, I saw something that caught my eye. I think Micah may have started it, but one by one all the panelists took their name placards, wrote their Twitter handles on the back, then flipped them around so you were looking at a row of people announcing themselves by @handles....Think of the power of this for Twitter. You don't need to name the animals. You only need to be the language in which animals speak [about] themselves. For Unlimited Power (mmmwhahahahhaha)"
- Vanity URLs as lock-in for users. Messina: "[This is something] Tim O'Reilly warned about in his definition of Web 2.0. He said that one of the new kinds of lock-in in the era of [cloud computing] will be owning a namespace. There you have it -- who are you going to trust to own yours?"
Think about how often many people now identify themselves as "@twitterusername" - is that not a little creepy? The more we build our identities, social connections and personal histories around a single communication platform that we don't control - the less free we become to take our ball and go home if the need arises in the future.
What if Twitter does something more egregious than its recent muffling of conversation via @ replies? What if Facebook does something you find incredibly offensive regarding matters like Holocaust denial. What if a better service simply comes along? What are you going to do - leave Facebook?
That will be hard enough given that all your messages, your media and your friend connections are trapped there. Why make it harder on yourself to act freely by introducing yourself as Facebook.com/ImAgOober to everyone you meet?
So goes the argument. It's better to grab your own domain (I have Marshallk.com, for example, and wrote about this there as well) and to use that link to then point people out to whatever social networks you happen to be participating in at the time. You'll always own your own domain and you set the rules.
Perhaps this is all a bunch of conspiracy theory, though. Perhaps most people don't care because our "digital identities" and the data we produce and share isn't really that important to us. Maybe we're more than willing to sell that stuff to Facebook for convenience and the social connections we have on the site right now. Millions of people referred to themselves as MySpace.com/PersonOrBandName and did that kill anyone? No big deal. That could very well be how most of Facebook's 200 million users feel about it.
Sure, we'll all probably go grab our names on Facebook on Friday - but the real question is how we will relate to that URL.
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I feel like Tom Hanks in "Big." I want to raise my hand and say "I don't get it."
Posted by: Kevin Pedraja
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June 10, 2009 10:59 AM
u don't get the excitement or u don't get the critique?
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 10, 2009 11:00 AM
I don´t get why everyone is going gaga about it either. But then again I´m not a facebookizen. You could point any number of subdomains of services or your own domain there couldn´t you ? Would be even vanityiererer.
Posted by: Thomas Bøhm
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June 10, 2009 11:03 AM
Interesting - I wonder what the terms say about when the URL can be "revoked" by Facebook and I wonder whether there will be disputes around Facebook revoking URLs (not for squatting, but based on conduct/content deemed inappropriate by Facebook).
Of course, the squatting problem exists as well. I don't see this as significant legal risk for FB, but I'm sure lawsuits will come out of the woodwork.
I agree with you Marshall. I only put my Twitter ID on badges when it makes sense (tweetups), and I have my domain name .... I suspect there well be a giant and confusing land grab for popular "names" on Facebook ... I foresee lawsuits in the future.
That said I, like you I suspect, will make sure I grab my name space.
The question is, as you point out, will we let other sites and services define us or allow us to define ourselves.
Marshall, Well argued. One of the rare instances of strong analytical journalism.
are you going to get a nickname or use your real name in "vanity" urls?
I think to get my real name, and not nickname cause I dont want connect my "real life" with my "virtual life" about forum, games, services and more.
Well, did we ever have this discussion with flickr? Or anywhere else indeed? When we started breaking down restrictions on domain names (remember when you could only have one .com domain?) we got the same arguments - but I don't think the world has ended.
Sure it gives some power to the vendor - so does 'Connect with Facebook' that I just used to log on here.
We rolls with the punches ...
This is exactly the sort of problem that makes WebFinger is so very needed in our new world of identities spread thin across the web. Instead of facebook.com/awesomename, if I could use "awesomename@myawesomedomain.com" to share my identity with my friends, then we avoid all these questions of lock-in, limited namespaces, etc.
... now to figure out the particulars of WebFinger. ;-)
I don't see why people are making such a fuss about this. Vanity URLs are common on nearly every other social media platform. This is just Facebook finally getting around to feature-parity. People act like they're putting everyone in prison. FB can't lock anyone in. As soon as it's not fashionable, people will move to whatever the next site is that catches enough people's fancies. No? Maybe there shouldn't be myname.wordpress.com, either. I think wordpress.com/?id=972988494 gives me *so* much more freedom. Ridiculous.
Marshall Can I add my brothers face you do not mind me, Would you accept, thank you
I don't get the excitement.
Posted by: Kevin Pedraja
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June 10, 2009 1:36 PM
How many of Facebook's bajillion users will even know what this means?
Posted by: Kevin Pedraja
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June 10, 2009 1:37 PM
It's a big deal for those who have Facebook as their "social identity cornerstone". I don't, but some people do.
Posted by: Jorge Escobar
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June 10, 2009 1:40 PM
I think we should take this at face value: vanity URLs allow FB users and most importantly Fan Pages to have plain English URLs that are easy to remember and type in - and more digestible for search engines to boot.
They are following a well-trodded path with LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Google Profiles, YouTube et al already offering this.
The intrinsic issue is how people manage their social profiles; some will misuse it but others will simply leverage it with the rest of their social toolkit. There's nothing stopping you from identifying your FB profile via your OWN namespace i.e. "marshallk.com/facebook".
Also this is exactly the sort of problem
You know what? Probably less than 1% of FB users give a rat's ass about this. So relax everybody, this ain't such a big deal really.
Facebook doesn't have my real name. God forbid. Same goes for many of my friends. It's close, but off enough where it won't connect elsewhere. If you see what companies like the credit guys (Experian etc) and the database companies (IE Axciom) are doing, you know that all that stuff you post is going to build a better profile of you to sell to advertisers. Be careful what you post guys, anywhere. Once it's on the Web, it *is* being attributed to you and you no longer own it or have any control over who sees it. All those applications you play with? They collect it all too. I've heard they are building links of who is friends with who in order to better "graph" social networks and get a clearer picture of you. Creepy? Absolutely. Adware had nothing on what is happening today. Trust no one, least of all Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Think of it this way before you post: would you say it in a crowded stadium over the loudspeaker? How about if the stadium records it, and plays it again for every game for every audience til you die?
Okay, rant over :)
I will however grab the URL for one of my client companies. Good for branding.
Hi there,
Interesting article. Not sure if I agree with you completely on all your points:
Vanity URLs as anonymity - people can put anything they want into the registration form. There's no identity authentication involved. I know people with multiple FB accounts under different names. People do what they want to do regardless.
Vanity URLs as too much power for the vendor - a name is a token which represents a person. You use the token to identify the person. We are all known by many names, nicknames, familiar pet names, etc. What power do you give to your friends by allowing them to call you a new nickname? This point doesn't make sense to me, and the last sentence is unintelligible.
Vanity URLs as lock-in for users. - again, a token is an identifier. Most people understand that it is a pointer to a person. And that others may use the same token to point to another person, but that MOSTLY it will point to the right one. In other words, your identity can represented unfairly or poorly by someone else at any point. No-one ever controls their use of their name. Think of friends who gossip about you behind your back. :)
The point about people identifying themselves by twitter ID as being creepy - uhh, as opposed to people identifying themselves by their e-mail address? or their company name? A word is a word. Twitter IDs are shorter than e-mail addresses, so that's better IMO. Concise. Easily related to others, easier to say on the radio or the TV.
Uhh, introducing the Holocaust into your article? Heard of Godwin's Law?
If twitter changes their service to something which is no longer palatable or usable for whatever reason, then we will move along to the next most attractive offering.
Should it happen, think of it as a natural evolutionary process for services, based on what people want. If we don't want it, it won't succeed.
So the services will be forced to change to what we want, or risk losing members.
How will I relate to my URL? I own and host my own domain, I have profiles on the services I use, and I point them all to my site. Works for me.
If FB or twitter dies, that's one less communication medium, but it is just a communication medium, not home base.
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It is me the only one who is happy? I'm anxiously waiting for the day!!
Hosting a virtual party to commemorate Fb's vanity URLs. Just use #fburlparty in a tweet to be featured on this page, http://bit.ly/10xK1W.
I will be shooting to get my last name and my business name. So all of you people please go out drinking Friday night :)
can't get the facebook url you want or don't have 1,000 fans on your page? here's one way to do it on your own.
http://blog.studiomds.com/
Not Everyone is Excited About Facebook Vanity URLs http://bit.ly/ptPcW [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2106072938]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 11, 2009 12:11 PM
Why not? It is much easier to remember your facebook url. Convenient, I like.
The greatest benefit of Facebook is that it has many groups on the site that you can join. So if you are interested in Chicago Cubs you can research Chicago Cubs in the groups section and you will be able to find friends on there that like the Cubs. This is just one example, I know that you can join groups of your favorite football team, television show, or whatever you want for the most part! If you can't find a group for your interest, you can simply create one!
James
it's a bit of a gold rush at the moment. people seeking URLs containng their keywords. But I think things will settle down soon enough
For those who were left out, would anyone care to sign this?
Petition: facebook to to provide vanity urls for new users and pages as well. @urbanhack http://twitition.com/vqthq
For those who were left out, would anyone care to sign this?
Petition: facebook to to provide vanity urls for new users and pages as well. @urbanhack http://twitition.com/vqthq
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http://www.hiphopalemi.net/Sohbet.asp .