The Facebook Countown: Live at the Scene

So I'm sitting at home like some loser on a Friday night waiting to grab my name (and see if anyone grabs the one I need for work) on Facebook. In case you haven't heard, Facebook is now allowing all users to have their own "vanity URLs". For example: if your name is Hugh Jass (hehehehe), your Facebook URL could be www.facebook.com/hughjass or www.facebook.com/hjass, etc., etc. So while I'm sitting here FREAKING out about the possibility (and the thought) of 200 million Facebook users racing online to grab their names, I can't help but wonder...am I (a) one of the very few who knows about this, or am I (b) one of the only few that cares about this.

Ponder this. This news of the Facebook Vanity URLs has been blogged about like CRAZY since they announced it earlier this week. In fact, Mashable (an online social media blog) is ON LOCATION at the Facebook headquarters to report the play by play of what's going on with the situation. So as I'm sitting on the couch with Steve who's watching game seven of the Stanley Cup playoffs, what am I doing? I'm on my couch, tweeting the play by play of the Facebook race of the century. I looked over at him and then down at my iPhone and thought to myself...hello? What the hell am I doing? Who cares if I end up being "melissa2929993" instead of just "melissa". Would I ever be actively giving out my facebook URL to people so much so that it would NEED to be easy for them to understand.

Once the game was over, I hurriedly opened my laptop to see what people were saying on Facebook and to tell you the truth, it's not all that much. Then it hit me. No one cares about all of this hoopla but marketers (i.e. me) who think that this is a do or die situation if they don't grab the best Vanity URL out there before someone else does. The race tonight won't be between 200 million Facebook users, it will be between the million (or hopefully less for my sake) marketers and maybe a few die hard Facebook fans who think that what's important is the name that you grab. What's missing is that the whole point of Facebook doesn't center around the name but each person or brand...so then I ask you this question: Will grabbing the name you just GOT to have make your brand/person/page any better? ...probably not.

None the less, with 27 minutes and 21 seconds to go, I will still sit here and wait.

(**cough** LOSER)