Source: blog.facebook.com

Facebook have decided – some would say at long last – to offer personalised usernames on a first-come-first-served basis from 12:01am EDT (4:01am GMT), linked to the user’s profile via a vanity URL such as http://www.facebook.com/dave.upstream. The only limitations are that only one username is allowed per profile/page, it must be at least 5 characters, and it must be made up only of alphanumeric characters and, if you want, a full stop. Thank the Lord that they’re not allowing counter-productive usernames that proliferate sites when they allow ASCII usernames such as ´¯`°¤.¸.¤…Bøñd. Jåmê§ Bøñd´¯`°¤.¸.¤ , or (L)pÛÑk~PrïÑcꧧ(L) …

So what does this mean? Well, for a start it’s going to be easier to link people to your Facebook profile, so you won’t need to give out your full name in order for people you just met to add you as a friend. Most people find my surname impossible to spell (even though it’s only 6 letters), so this would be useful to me if I weren’t so picky about who I add as my friends in the first place. It also not only gives companies a great opportunity for branding on Facebook, but finally gives ‘normal’ users a chance to match their Facebook username with the handle they use on other social media and bookmarking sites. This may not seem like a big thing, but username consistency will also make it easier for people to find you (that is, if you want to be found).

In SEO terms, however – which is the interesting part for us – it may well mean that you can pick pretty specific keywords for your profile to show up in Google search, which has even further-reaching possibilities. As so eloquently put by Jeremiah from web-strategist.com: “If the Blog is the new résumé, then is “Google Me” the business card?”. Businesses may be able to make strategic use of this by registering their primary keywords as the vanity username for their page, and with the power of Facebook’s pagerank this could end up being a very useful – if a little morally grey – exploit. All of this, of course, depends on whether Google will index the new Facebook URLs; but with sites like Flickr, FriendFeed, Twitter and LinkedIn featuring prominently in search results for a while now, it’s fair to say that this has become the norm for social networking sites.

Happily, Facebook have issued the following caveat to prevent the all-too predictable abuse of the new system:

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or “squatting” on names.

Still, how much are you willing to bet that Facebook will be down within a few minutes of the floodgates opening for username registration…? If I could have gotten www.facebook.com/dave, I probably would have been willing to stay up until 4am on Friday night to try to nab it, just for the bragging rights. Damn their arbitrary 5 character limit…