Vanity URLs, like the ones available in Google Profile, offer two main advantages:
1. These web addresses are short, easy-to-remember and often look good on your business cards.
2. They are great for reputation management. All other factors remaining the same, a vanity URL like facebook.com/david-pogue is likely to rank higher in Google for the query "David Pogue" than say facebook.com?p=234.
Pick a Username for your Facebook Profile
Currently, most public profiles on Facebook are of the form facebook.com/profile.php?id=<some_number> but starting Saturday* (or Friday night depending upon your Time zone), Facebook will let you pick a username for your profile so that the new Facebook URL will become something like facebook.com/<your_name>.
*Check the world map above to know the exact time when Facebook Vanity URLs will become available in your country /time-zone.
This sounds exciting but the problem is that there are as many as 200 million active users on Facebook and they all will get an opportunity to pick a user name for their Facebook profiles at the same time so chances are high that the username you want is taken even before you type one.
So here are some tips to help you get the vanity URL that you want.
1: Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal users can click here to add an event reminder to their calendars. If you use using Google Calendar, click here to import this event into your calendar. The idea is that the data and time should not slip out of your mind.
2: A Facebook username is permanent so if you misspell it or pick a wrong name, it will stay like that forever. Also, usernames can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period (".") so carefully think of some alternatives beforehand.
3: Facebook has already assigned vanity URLs to some businesses, celebrities, artists and other public figures so these usernames will obviously remain unavailable to the public on Saturday.
You can use the Facebook Vanity Search Engine to determine usernames that have already been taken on Facebook. If the name you are looking for has already been reserved, start researching other variations.
Step 4: There are more than 500 hundred users on Facebook who share the same name as me – Amit Agarwal. Now if just 10 of them decide to claim facebook.com/amit.agarwal at the same time, it’s pure luck that will decide the "winner."
So here’s a tip for people who have such a "common name" – take the help of your spouse.
For instance, if your name is John Public, other permutations like john.public, johnpublic, public.john or j.public or john.p will also make sense. Assign half of these usernames to your wife and she can then check availability in parallel by logging into your own Facebook account but on a different computer.
This alone will double your chances of grabbing a good username on Facebook.