Small Business Blog

This past Friday, Facebook allowed its members to reserve a unique URL for their profile. Within 15 minutes; over half a million teens, cyber-squatters, and night owls raced to reserve their unique profile URL. Unfortunately, for the majority of members who were not ready to do battle on Facebook at 3AM EST, they will be forever stuck with an odd and often unmemorable Facebook URL.

“I hadn’t thought to come up with a back up! Now I needed one on the fly. If I waited to think about it, more good choices might disappear. So, I decided to go with chrisobrien68: My name and birth year. Probably meaningless to everyone but me. Hardly a grand branding statement. But there it is. My Facebook URL FOREVER! http://www.facebook.com/chrisobrien68″

-Silicon Beat

Facebook is actually late to the game when it comes to allowing their members to reserve unique URLs. This was a feature already standard on MySpace, LinkedIn, and Referral Key. What is interesting, is the manner in which Facebook launched this feature. While sites like Referral Key allow their members to reserve their unique URL as they register, (Or any time after) Facebook opened the floodgates all at once in a 3AM media blitz.

As one could imagine, the results have been controversial. Facebook URLs may be just one more reason to separate your social networking from your business networking. A Facebook URL of “www.facebook.com/joeblow0217364″ is not only  impossible to remember but it’s a poor branding strategy.

Referral Key member URL’s are unique in that they are your small business name, not your first/last name. For example, Ben Stein of Tweeple Marketing Consultants:

http://www.referralkey.com/profile/consultant-marketing-tweeple-consulting

Using your small business name in your URL may prove to be a better way to drive sales; as potential clients are less likely to be looking for your name and more likely to be looking for your business name (especially if your business name describes your services).

You can reserve your small business URL in just a few minutes by signing up here.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 10:35 am and is filed under Small Business Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.