[Infowarrior] - Facebook Users Cancel Friday Night Plans to Claim New Names

[Richard Forno]

Facebook Users Cancel Friday Night Plans to Claim New Names

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=afbl_HKpAJHA#

By Joseph Galante and Ian King

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Tomorrow night may be a late one for some  
Facebook users.

The world’s largest social-networking site is offering people the  
chance to claim a personalized Web address beginning at midnight New  
York time on a first-come, first-served basis. The plan’s announcement  
two days ago sparked a frenzy among users planning to grab their names.

David Whittemore, 25, typically hangs out at bars on Friday nights  
with his friends. This week, he’ll be at his computer, ready to take  
his name when the clock strikes midnight.

“It’s going to be a land grab,” said Whittemore, who works for a  
finance startup in New York. “I’m definitely going to be staying home.”

Facebook Inc. is allowing users to select one name per person, letting  
them create a Web address for their Facebook profile, such as http://www.facebook.com/david 
. At the moment, addresses typically contain a sequence of numbers.  
The aim, Facebook says, is to make it easier to find profiles using  
search engines such as Google Inc.

If someone else has already snagged your name, you’re out of luck. And  
once users confirm the name they want, it can’t be changed.

Jacquie Brennan, a 57-year-old attorney in Houston, says she’s trying  
for the name “iJac,” because she’s a fan of Apple Inc. products. If  
she can’t get that, she’ll settle for “MoreMerlot.”

‘Cool Name’

“You can bet that if everyone else has a cool name, I am going to have  
one too,” said Brennan, who’s been on Facebook for more than a year  
and has the site open on her computer all day.

Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, says it can’t predict how  
many people will hit the site requesting their names. “We have taken  
steps to take a look at the infrastructure and put the necessary  
pieces in place to make sure the service isn’t affected,” said Larry  
Yu, a spokesman for the company.

Facebook attracted 67.5 million users in April, making it the eighth- 
most visited Web site in the U.S., according to ComScore Inc., a  
research firm in Reston, Virginia. The site lets people share photos,  
post updates on what they’re doing, and send messages to each other.  
After people have set their user names, they have the option to  
publish it in their “stream,” or the rolling list of updates they  
share with friends, Facebook said.

The rush to grab user names harks back to the early days of the  
Internet, when squatters would take domain names and try to sell them  
at a profit, said Dan Neely, chief executive officer of Networked  
Insights, a Madison, Wisconsin-based firm that advises companies on  
how to promote themselves on social- networking sites.

Domain Squatting

“You remember the days of folks buying random domains because they  
thought they were going to be able to sell them for massive amounts of  
money? It’s going to be like that,” Neely said.

Facebook is taking steps to prevent squatting. Users won’t be able to  
transfer their names to others. The company will also only allow users  
to claim a name if they had an account before the feature was  
announced June 9, according to its Web site. This will prevent people  
from creating new accounts just to grab their addresses, Facebook  
said. That restriction lifts on June 28.

The excitement from users rushing to register their names could have  
been a moneymaking opportunity for Facebook, said Charlene Li, founder  
of Altimeter Group, a San Mateo, California-based research firm that  
specializes in social technology.

Revenue Option?

“The question is: How come Facebook isn’t charging for this?” Li said.  
“They could make some money on it.”

Facebook, whose investors include Microsoft Corp. and venture-capital  
firm Accel Partners, was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 as a  
social-networking service for his classmates at Harvard University.  
The company generates sales through advertising, and expects revenue  
to climb 70 percent this year, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg  
said in April.

“We think offering the feature for free is in the best interest of the  
vast majority of users,” Facebook’s Yu said.

Facebook received a $200 million investment last month from Russian  
investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, valuing the company at $10  
billion. Companies are increasingly seeing social networks as a way to  
build their brands because of the number of people on them, Digital  
Sky partner Alexander Tamas said at a conference in Carlsbad,  
California, last month.

Twitter Inc., the San Francisco-based social-networking service that  
lets people type short updates to their friends, already offers Web  
addresses that include user names.

That means Twitter users could lead the charge to lock up their names  
on Facebook, said Christopher Peri, a 44-year-old software developer  
and entrepreneur based in Oakland, California. Peri said he will try  
to get “Perivision,” a brand that he has been using online since he  
studied virtual reality at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If there’s going to be a Perivision, it’s going to be me,” Peri said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joseph Galante in San  
Francisco at jgalante3 at bloomberg.netIan King in San Francisco at ianking at bloomberg.net
Last Updated: June 11, 2009 00:00 EDT