Facebook land grab at midnight
At midnight EDT Facebook opens the floodgates to the planet.
Starting on Friday, June 12th you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.
What will this mean for SEO PR and Social Media PR strategy?
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June 15th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Since Facebook is the behemoth of social networks, its no wonder people are putting great value in usernames. Fortunately, Facebook has set up regulations to prevent unethical username hoarding (or “squatting”). Here are some rules to consider:
You can only select a username for your own profile, or a page you administer. To register a page, it must have been live and had 1,000 fans PRIOR TO MAY 31 (so no creating pages just to grab the names). It is also against Facebook’s TOS to create multiple user accounts. They have banned people for doing such things.
To prevent people from claiming a username directly related to you, or your company’s, trademark (for example, “pilmerpr”), fill out this form on Facebook’s Web site: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights
If somebody else has already claimed a username that infringes on your trademark, fill out the “IP infringement” form, and they’ll review your claim: http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php?noncopyright_notice=1
And, for your information, usernames must be at least five characters long, and contain only letters, numbers, and periods (no spaces). It is currently restricted to the Romanized alphabet, but they are working to expand it.