DISQUS

Joe Dawson · 6 months ago

Louis I don't think the fullstop matters in the username, if you try;

http://www.facebook.com/joedawson
http://www.facebook.com/joe.dawson
http://www.facebook.com/joedaw.son

They all redirect to my profile, regardless of the position of the fullstop. It's possible that the usernames are reserved especially considering that when you try and access the ID's they redirect to the 'The page you requested was not found'

Alex Leonard · 6 months ago

I'm confused as to why the full stop doesn't matter. Why even mention it in their examples then, or why offer it at all.

JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗) · 6 months ago

Yep, that is correct.

These are all the same:
http://facebook.com/j.C.j.O.h.N.s.E.s.E.c.U.n.E...
http://facebook.com/JC.J.o.H.n.SESE.C.u.N.e.T.a.

Someone inside there really thought about this well. But then as Alex mentioned, "why offer it at all" when any combination will just point to the same profile. It's as good as (using my profile) http://facebook.com/JCJohnSeseCuneta

Suzanne Asprea · 5 months ago

I am SO happy to see this blog post, Louis. I've been driving myself INSANE wondering what I'd done wrong. I too, am in Facebook Purgatory.

I'm a page admin for a national retailer and when I tried to get our name, which I'd registered as trademark-protected with FB on Thursday, FB told me it was unavailable. But when I went to check the URL to see who was squatting, I got a "page does not exist" error. Buh?

I also got this e-mail Friday night from FB User Operations:

"Thank you for submitting your trademark term(s). We’ve seen a large number of submissions and over the next few weeks we expect we’ll introduce a process for trademark owners to request the use of their restricted terms. We appreciate your patience in the interim and will be in touch soon."

Did you receive something similar? Seems really odd that they'd tell me NOW that they're working on a process to get us our own freaking name. A warning that if you protected your trademark, even you wouldn't be able to get it would have been nice. Major Fail, Facebook.

But thankyouthankyouthankyou for sharing your experience because it means I'm not crazy. ;-)

Tony Ruscoe · 6 months ago

For the record, louisgray and louis.gray are the same anyway. Even l.o.u.i.s.g.r.a.y if you like. The behaviour is like Gmail usernames.

anna · 6 months ago

So my username of choice was also in limbo, but it's not famous or anything: banane. Isn't that weird? Not a real profile, but also not available. Not like a full first and last name, but odd all the same, to me.

Jolie O'Dell · 6 months ago

Seekers? Aw, I was happy to wait in line with my homies. We even hosted a Facebook URL party tonight... one of many. I got called an elitist snob for having my name parked, but all the same - at the end of the night, *I* was the one with no vanity URL. Thx FB. =/

Joe Dawson · 6 months ago

When you have selected your Facebook Vanity URL what happens when you get married?

Tyler Gillies · 6 months ago

good thing i got mine after i got married ;)

Jesse Stay · 6 months ago

I think a lot of us actually asked Facebook not to reserve the name for us. You can see me trying to get "jessestay" live at http://ustream.tv/channel/thesocialgeek

Jesse Stay · 6 months ago

It was kinda like going downstairs for Christmas and seeing no present under the tree. :-)

Jason Clarke · 6 months ago

The same thing happened to me. I ended up going with jason.p.clarke instead of my desired jasonclarke or even jason.clarke. Now I'm wondering if I screwed up by choosing something non-optimal, and maybe I should have waited? Not that it really matters; it's not going to change how I use Facebook (which isn't all that much), but I feel compelled to get my username whenever possible on services that I use, even if only occasionally.

Tony Ruscoe · 6 months ago

Jason, the difference is that jasonclarke is taken by someone else (http://www.facebook.com/jasonclarke) whereas louisgray (http://www.facebook.com/louisgray) and jessestay (http://www.facebook.com/jessestay) aren't taken by anyone.

Susan Beebe · 6 months ago

Facebook's "username" behavior is similar to gmail's wherein the punctuation is ignored. susan.beebe = susanbeebe

anna · 6 months ago

I'm not famous like Louis & Jesse- so why is my username taken? Very odd. I wonder if they do some badword filtering and for some reason the French for banana was taken. A new idiomatic usage I didn't know?

Tony Ruscoe · 6 months ago

Anna, they're not allowing generic words as usernames, so it's quite possible they've localised that list and also excluded non-English generic words. This note is specifically for Pages but the usernames adopt the same rules: "Will usernames such as “flowers” or “pizza” ever be available for Facebook Pages? Can I sign up on a waiting list?" http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=911064...

The Amber · 6 months ago

Makes more sense why I couldn't get my first name since I was sure it was not taken.

anna · 6 months ago

Tony - yeah that makes sense, thanks for helping me deal with my undirected outrage ;)

adorno · 6 months ago

LMAO! The self-importance and sense of entitlement amazes me.

I think they meant 'real' journalists and media people. Not guys who stay at home in their pajamas in front of a computer.

Louis Gray · 6 months ago

Wow, Adorno. You nailed it. The good news is that I actually have pictures of my using the computer in my PJs. I should send them your way.

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) · 6 months ago

Assuming for the moment that this was done by a well-meaning Facebook employee who wanted to protect these names from squatters, the fact that they did this without communicating to any of you certainly had unintended consequences, since they locked out people who were most likely to communicate the lockout, and were most likely to be heard by others. One would think that any such employee would have communicated with you, Michael, and Jesse.

Of course my assumption may be completely off-base and something else may be at work. We'll see.

Sheamus · 6 months ago

I imagine they've been reserved Louis. Although http://facebook.com/chrisbrogan was snapped up by somebody else, so I might be wrong.

Also not in the hands of arguably the rightful owners:

http://www.facebook.com/problogger
http://www.facebook.com/brianclark (looks like Brian went for /copyblogger)
http://www.facebook.com/chrisgarrett

Some swine also got 'Sheamus', but at least my full name was available. Curious, as Joe points out, that placing a dot anywhere in the username part of your url doesn't matter.

Damien Basile · 5 months ago

What's even more interesting is that the guy who took http://www.facebook.com/problogger is Facebook friends with Darren Rowse. Now that's not very friendly.

Jason Clarke · 6 months ago

Tony, jasonclarke didn't appear to be taken when I was trying to get it, though as you say it is now. Maybe that was a timing glitch. Oh well.

marshal sandler · 6 months ago

Interesting ! Excellent Comments-As Always

Brandon Mendelson · 6 months ago

Louis,

I would suspect it was a well meaning Facebook employee as they (seem to) monitor the tech / social networking media pretty well. It seems like a PR nightmare waiting to happen if they did not, particularly if they angered the wrong person.

Brenda Young · 6 months ago

I guess there are more people with your name than you thought. I wonder if FB took any precautions to make sure someone didn't claim your name as their own much as there was a problem with corporate URLs being usurped at an earlier time on the Internet. -- I didn't hold out much hope to get my own name on FB, since it is so common (Brenda Young). I am resigned to having to let my "charming self" be known as 4byoung on FB, here, and elsewhere.

Judi Weiler Sohn · 6 months ago

Hi Louis, odds are your name was reserved for you intentionally and you missed the memo.

I used to be editor of a GigaOm network site (WebWorkerDaily). As such, I was notified earlier in the week that /judisohn would be reserved for me if I wanted it (they didn't realize I was no longer working for the site) and I just had to let them know my Facebook ID. I replied letting them know I was no longer affiliated with GigaOm, but that was the name I wanted. I asked if it could still be reserved in advance or could they release it so I could get it on Saturday. He replied that I was still able to reserve it early, but I was told that it would take hours, if not days for the URL to resolve to my profile. Sure enough, this morning I logged in while the URL does not work, judisohn is not listed as a name I can reserve (I got the banner at the top like everyone else). I didn't care about using the URL, I just wanted to make sure that no one else could use it, so I have no complaints about the delay.

So I would say that your hunch that it was "helpfully" set aside for you was correct. If you want, message me and I'll give you the name of the Facebook employee I communicated with.

Hope that helps!

IdoNotes · 6 months ago

I saw the hold on chrismiller to find that it was truly gone. But it seems they could have cared less about IdoNotes as it was readily available.

facebook-1068185185 · 6 months ago

Quite right. The two things that happened here was FB getting supreme profile for very little investment and the fact that FB handled the whole technology overload issues so well.

ramiromarques · 6 months ago

Hi, Louis! I have got my username: http://www.facebook.com/ramiromarques
I am sure you will get yours. So does Micahel Arrington. You deserve it.

Janet Fouts · 5 months ago

That's interesting. I had similar results when I registered my Google profile. My usual jfouts wasn't available though it didn't appear to be in use and I ended up with jfouts1.

Actually I'm regretting the Facebook URL now as I tend to use Facebook differently than my other networks like Twitter and I'm not sure I want those networks to cross over so much.

Michael Becker · 5 months ago

I ran into the same situation, and I'm not even some well-known blogger. About 45 seconds after registrations started, by my watch, my chosen username -- "becker" -- was listed as unavailable. I opted for "michael.becker" instead. I checked on facebook.com/becker right afterward, to see which quicker Becker managed to snag it first. No page listed. Same today, no page listed. A bit disappointing.

Shawn Collins · 5 months ago

I had the same experience - I went in at the start to get shawncollins and it wasn't available, yet www.facebook.com/shawncollins is a dead page.

sarah · 5 months ago

I could only register sarah.lefton but when I typed in /sarahlefton to see if that other girl beat me to it (there are only 2 sarah leftons in the world that i know of) it redirected to my name. whee. and i am certainly not a big blogger.

RogerJH · 5 months ago

Facebook = the Microsoft of social media. As the social network giant consolidates its dominance, such heavy-handed whims and failures of competence will become commonplace.

Suzanne Asprea · 5 months ago

[gah. posted as a reply the first time.]

I am SO happy to see this blog post, Louis. I've been driving myself INSANE wondering what I'd done wrong. I too, am in Facebook Purgatory.

I'm a page admin for a national retailer and when I tried to get our name, which I'd registered as trademark-protected with FB on Thursday, FB told me it was unavailable. But when I went to check the URL to see who was squatting, I got a "page does not exist" error. Buh?

I also got this e-mail Friday night from FB User Operations:

"Thank you for submitting your trademark term(s). We’ve seen a large number of submissions and over the next few weeks we expect we’ll introduce a process for trademark owners to request the use of their restricted terms. We appreciate your patience in the interim and will be in touch soon."

Did you receive something similar? Seems really odd that they'd tell me NOW that they're working on a process to get us our own freaking name. A warning that if you protected your trademark, even you wouldn't be able to get it would have been nice. Major Fail, Facebook.

But thankyouthankyouthankyou for sharing your experience because it means I'm not crazy. ;-)

Chris Clayton · 5 months ago

i couldnt get mine either, however after doing some research, i discovered one of my assistants had contacted facebook to get it protected as a trademark, so i cant get mine.

Dhannanjay · 5 months ago

Good and valuable post. Keep it up. Keep reading, keep thinking and keep writing.
Good work
Louisgray