It seems that with every new feature addition to Facebook there are as many naysayers and unhappy customers as there are proponents of the changes. From time to time I’ve written entries here supporting some changes to the site; other times I’ve criticized certain changes for making the site all the more unfriendly and hard to use. This post briefly discusses the latest Facebook feature: profile usernames.
Who needs them?
That’s a good question. To some, perhaps this marks just another “useless” feature, but for the 5 million people who registered usernames within the first 3 days of their introduction it screams for some attention. But for those of you still holding out, let me explain a few reasons why registering your own unique Facebook username might not be such a bad idea after all.
- What is a username?
For those of you who might not be familiar with how this works, a Facebook username is a unique name with no spaces that allows websites and people to quickly link to and access your Facebook profile. For example, after registering my own username, you can now access my Facebook page by visiting: http://www.facebook.com/matthamann. Yup, it’s that simple. - A username could help family and friends find you faster
These days search is king. Type your own name into Google and you might be amazed at how many results appear that link to some aspect of you, whether it be your blog, Facebook profile, a news article from high school or college, or who knows what else? The fact of the matter is: if you have any of these social networking devices, you’re not interested in hiding your identity from the rest of the world. If you were, you wouldn’t use those services. - It’s way more friendly
Before Facebook usernames existed, any time an individual needed to directly access or link to a user’s profile, they would have to enter a url similar to this one: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=630269242. Trust me, nobody wants to have to worry about long complicated stuff like that. Visiting http://www.facebook.com/matthamann is just so much easier to use and remember. Of course, picking a username like “dragonboy673″ probably won’t help you much unless you’re well known around the ‘Net by that moniker, but picking something closely related to who you are or what you do can drastically improve your visibility.
Are there more reasons to go ahead and get a Facebook username? Why don’t you let me know by leaving a comment?