Facebook User Names

OK so some people might already think I am a bit geeky and if you don’t already think so then you will possibly after this posting!

I picked up on some news last night which has got me mildly (and I do mean only mildly!) excited!

Basically Facebook are going to be introducing proper user names to accounts you know like most other applications do where you can actually direct people to your blog or personal page, profile page, or whatever it happens to be by using user friendly terms, e.g. this blog is written on Blogspot and my user name there is blogmyway (I have been using a variation on a theme across various platforms for a while based around an initial blog called ‘maywayoutnow’ so I use ‘myway’ ‘mywayout’ mywayoutjournal’ etc, so on this blog my address is http://blogmywaynow.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter my address is http://twitter.com/mywaynow and so on it goes! And other places I have used my name in one form or another.

Anyhow, until now Facebook itself has only used totally arbitrary profile ID no’s and very difficult to identify long addresses to identify users, making it near on impossible to just say to someone ‘this is my Facebook address’ well this is all set to change Saturday Morning, midnight EDT (well 1 minute past to be precise!) which is 5am in the UK, they will be releasing the user names facility and they will be dealt with on a first come first served basis so if your name is John Smith you will have to be very much on the ball to get the user name john.smith. your The other thing to watch is that you will only get one shot at it! They will only allocate 1 user name per user and this will be with you for the whole time you have your account, the only way of changing it is by setting up a new account. So you don’t want to be lumbered with anything that you might regret in a few months time! This might of course cause problems for women, who change their names when they get married etc, but we will have to see whether they come up with a way of getting round this.

I am keen to get a user name as it will be useful but am torn as to whether to go for david.cavanagh or get one based on the ‘mywaynow’ theme! Could go either way and it may depend on what is available when I get round to it, and NO I have no intention of getting up at 5am to get one! Although do understand that there are people who are cancelling nights out and setting alarms etc just to get the user name they really WANT!

I have a feeling that there could be a few tears Friday Night/Saturday morning as I suspect that the Facebook server will just get overwhelmed by the number of requests just after the service opens and will just crash!

Anyhow, you can read more about it here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

And if you are really geeky you can watch a countdown time and see the exact time in your local time zone here: http://www.facebook.com/username/

But if you want my advice, don’t stay up late or cancel previous engagements or set your alarm for a silly time as it will all end in tears if the server crashes and if you are really keen on getting a decent user name based on your name you could always change your name to ‘oglibonus ingunolus’ I bet that user name wont go too quickly!