Facebook URLs – Good for personal branding

Which one sounds better? http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=123456&ref=profile (dummy id) or http://www.facebook.com/kanupriyasindhu? Clearly 2^nd one, isn’t it?

With 3 million URLs in first 14 hours itself, Facebook’s launch of its username URL is definitely outdated news now. I was also one of those who decided to grab my username URL immediately but before I got my personal one I actually decided to create it for the brand I work for. Now there are many pages for this brand already on Facebook, one created officially by me earlier, some created by employees, some by fans of this service & some by dissatisfied customers, so this immediate rush to grab the official URL was definitely to ensure that the organization only gets the actual name before anybody else. And now that I’ve got it, I think I definitely like this feature. Here are some of the reasons why I think it’s a cool feature esp. from branding perspective:

• It’s a good feature for individual branding. We use our social media URLs on different communication platforms & a URL like http://www.facebook.com/company (dummy id) is easier to promote as compared to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1122334455 (dummy id)

• A branded URL will definitely help in climbing the ladder up in SEO. Just google your name / username & you can see the result.

• A formal URL will now finally help in distinguishing an official page with others.  Earlier distinctions used to be just on the basis of some profile id numbers and there was hardly any individuality in those URLs.

Considering their huge popularity, it was one of the must-have functionalities which Facebook was lacking behind as compared to say a linkedin or twitter. Though late in its launch but still it’s a welcome change from Facebook. In case you’ve not set your username URL till now, go & grab one here.