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Facesquatting: When Facebook Vanity URLS attack
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by Truemorist | June 15, 2009 at 09:00 am
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From the nanosecond Facebook began allowing vanity URLs, a new issue has arisen: facesquatting. Wait a sec, you perv: this isn't some NSFW action. Just like its cousin, cybersquatting, facesquatting is when you steal someone else's Facebook URL before they get a chance to claim it, either as a prank, to gank a celebrity's name before they do, or just for the lulz. Since Facebook vanity URLs are permanent once claimed, this is really pissing people off, to the extent that people should be pissed off in regards to Facebook.
So, in a nutshell: Facesquatting: taking some one else's Facebook url.
Facesquatting. Are you into it? And, if so, then why? These URLs cannot be changed, so it's hard to see much market value in them. The would-be squatter is doomed to walk the Facebook landscape as BetterHomesand Gardens or YahooSerious for the rest of his or her days...
Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said the company was looking the emerging commerce over vanity URLs. “We are working through how we are going to address that. Generally speaking our policy is a strict no-transferability clause,” he said.
So sad. Outrage! And hilarity. Anyway: Facebook is still fun, sometimes.
If nothing else, this gives Facebook an emergency relevance transfusion as it slides, perhaps terminally, into Twitter clone-dom.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (5)
at 09:26 on June 15th, 2009
Of course, this gives conservative companies who are slow to adopt new online strategies just one more thing to sweat over.
at 09:29 on June 15th, 2009
We had a blast chatting about this on the @wired twitter feed in the wee hours of Saturday morning during the land grab. Got some excellent tips about names that were being hijacked — Rush Limbaugh is a big one — and a full complement of frat boy selections as well). Our headline kind of says it all: Facebook URL Madness: I Got Mine, But So did Haywood Jablowme (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/facebook-url-madness-i-got-mine-but-so-did-haywood-jablome/)
at 09:29 on June 15th, 2009
We had a blast chatting about this on the @wired twitter feed in the wee hours of Saturday morning during the land grab. Got some excellent tips about names that were being hijacked — Rush Limbaugh is a big one — and a full complement of frat boy selections as well). Our headline kind of says it all: Facebook URL Madness: I Got Mine, But So did Haywood Jablowme (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/facebook-url-madness-i-got-mine-but-so-did-haywood-jablome/)
at 09:30 on June 15th, 2009
If there is a profit to be made, their is a profit to be made
at 10:11 on June 15th, 2009
As someone working for one of those "conservative companies", we didn't sweat, we pulled up the trademark information required only to find that facebook is not allowing URLs shorter than 5 characters. My company has a three-letter name.
No big deal; if/when we use facebook in a work sense we'll use a subdomain anyway - to prove it really is us.