The #1 Reason Why You Must Own Your Name On Facebook

As you all may know, Facebook has been constantly improving its features and applications to better satisfy its users. One big adjustment that happened over the summer was Facebook’s introduction of the vanity url.

For those of you who may be a little clueless to the term, here’s a little homework…

“A vanity URL is a domain name, created to point to something to which it it related and indicated in the name of the URL. A vanity URL is used to link to something that would be easier to remember than a random link or a link with a lot of numbers and letters.”

Why is this so important?

With the constant evolution of the web, and the growing use of social networks as a platform to build brands, network, or even score a job, the importance of “owning yourself” in the web is becoming more and more pressing. This is becoming one of the key ingredients to the success of anyone trying to do anything online. To be searchable within Google means to be visible. And  being visible puts you in direct view of more than 1 billion people… a number unachievable via any other medium.

Social networks such as Twitter, Flickr and others have caught on to this phenomena. However, Facebook lagged behind. For months, Facebook users complained about having a very impersonal Facebook URL (i.e. http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=567830988). The possibility of being searchable was impossible. And many people were using Facebook at the time to build brands, network, and score jobs.

Finally, Facebook relinquished its position and announced that it would be offering the ability to get a personalized URL (i.e.http://www.new.facebook.com/______).

The only catch was that it was based on a first-come, first-serve basis.

So, at 12:00am Saturday morning (June 9th, 2009), the “Race to Claim Your Name” began. And believe, I made it my mission to claim my name as soon as the option became available. The funniest thing was reading blogs of people who jumped in the race too late, and found that someone had already taken their name. This may seem irrelevant now, but trust… the web is becoming… or should I say… is already the biggest medium in the world. And everyone has the chance to stake their claim. We all have an equal chance to build our success through leveraging the web. Facebook is only one example of why this is so important.

Check out this video about Facebook Vanity URL’s from Gary Vaynerchuk, a successful entrepreneur who has leveraged the web to build a multi-million dollar personal brand.