Online Real Estate Technology

As a follow up to my post yesterday on Facebook vanity URL’s, it seems there’s a little more to this than I first thought. On reading the FAQ’s for Facebook user names, there are a few revealing terms about how you can go about claiming your URL and more importanlty a number of restrictions on you doing it. Firstly you have had to have a live page prior to May31st which is the cut off date and you have to have a minimum of 1,000 fans as of May31st.

That is no mean feat for most small business owners, let alone people like myself who don’t have anywhere near that many friends or followers. This rule will affect many operators who want to have their own vanity URL, just like Twitter and other sites allow you to do. The reason as I understand it from Facebook, is to stop squatters and people creating accounts just to take advantage of reserving a user name.

Squatters pose a real risk to the vanity URL issue going smoothly on Saturday, so it is good to see Facebook make a positive step to try and stop this happening.  

I’m aware that Facebook’s restrictions could create a situation where the primary desired name gets snatched up when the names are released on Saturday, But Facebook has already addressed this to an extent. If you’re at all concerned about your trademark or intellectual property being registered, you can almost be assured that you’re protected. You can submit this form now to prevent individuals from using your trademarked name or request removalafter the fact. However, it’s still unclear as whether or not those efforts will net you the user name of your choice if you don’t meet the fans requirement.

If I have any additional information to add to this before Saturday I’ll post an update for you.