Facebook Vanity URLs – the campaign to get one…

AllFacebook.com seems to think that Facebook are about to open up Vanity URLs for sale.

Vanity URLs are, for example: www.facebook.com/MichaelJackson or www.facebook.com/BritneySpears – URLs that are linked to specific names or products. ¬†This is an area where MySpace still has the ascendency over Facebook – in that band posters and celebrity posters are plastered with their URL, eg: www.myspace.com/tomuglymusic – specific, customised and branded. ¬†Currently, there’s no specific link to a person’s Facebook fan page or personal page – it’s an ugly mess of letters and numbers, eg: facebook.com/pages/x394895c785t8j78 (not a real link).

Please Facebook, give me a vanity URL. ¬†I’ll do anything! ¬†I’ll write about it in my blog, shout it from the rooftops. ¬†I’ll promote the living sh*t out of vanity URLS for you. ¬†I’d love facebook.com/beer, facebook.com/business, facebook.com/football or facebook.com/sex – but if none of those are available, I’d happily make do with facebook.com/con

This is what they have to say on the matter of vanity URLs right now:

Unfortunately we are not currently able to approve requests for vanity URLs (web addresses). The only Pages that presently have vanity URLs are bands and businesses that partnered with us for the initial launch of this new product. We hope to make these URLs available for everyone to have on their individual Page(s) in the future. When this feature is available, we will provide instructions on how to obtain a vanity URL on this help page.

If Facebook decides to open up vanity URLs (whether free or paid), it will land a very serious blow upon its competitor MySpace.  It will leave MySpace with very little in terms of key differentiators Рapart from the customisation of their pages, which in itself is becoming a double edged sword (customised = good, customised = all over the shop, very inconsistent user experience).