i5 Blog

Social networks: we’ve all heard of them, and most of us are at least familiar with the basic principles of all the major ones—Facebook is the biggest, YouTube is the place to watch videos, Flickr is for pictures, and Twitter is, well, Twitter. But enough about the basics! We’ve compiled a list of fun social media trivia that’s sure to make you the most popular guy or gal at your next party. Or help you answer a Final Jeopardy question. Or at least make you say “hmm.”

2,330,000,000 – Number of results Google returns for the search term “blog.” The top result is Blogger.com, a Google-owned blogging service.
4,920,093 – Number of people that follow @aplusk (aka: Ashton Kutcher), Twitter’s most popular user.
750,000 – Number of people who joined the group “Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)” when the news feed was introduced in 2005. Twitter, which was introduced in 2006, is a relatively close approximation and simplified version of the Facebook news feed. It currently boasts over 105,000,000 users.
50,237 – Number of times the most popular story on social news site Digg.com has been dugg. The story, entitled “Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,” featured a string of code that could decrypt HD DVD format DRM. It was removed after Digg received a cease and desist notice.
11,091 – Number of results Flickr returns for the search term “platypus.”
2003 – Year Friendster, the site that defined social networking as we know it today, was launched. Friendster is still active today. Approximately 90% of its traffic comes from Asia and it continues to work on expanding its Asian presence.
1998 – Year LiveJournal, the granddaddy of all blogging platforms, was introduced.
130 – Average number of Friends a Facebook user has.
37 – Percentage of users who update Twitter using their mobile phones.
4:3 – Ratio of funny children videos to funny cat videos on YouTube. (Funny children may dominate YouTube, but the most dugg video of all time was, you guessed it, a cat video.)
0 – Number of followers many Twitter users had on May 10, 2010. After discovering a bug that allowed users to force other users to follow them without their consent, Twitter admins reset many account holders’ follower counts to zero while they resolved the issue.

Since at least 2002, domain owners from Maui to Miami have been receiving so-called “courtesy” e-mails and letters from a company called Domain Registry of America (DRoA) reminding them that their domains are about to expire and encouraging them to renew with DRoA for the bargain basement price of $30/year. Often times, people don’t think twice about making the payment—after all, the DRoA name sounds official; the e-mails, letters, and DRoA website look legitimate; the 800 number DRoA offers connects callers to a real customer service tech; and many people don’t remember the last time they renewed their domain and certainly don’t want to allow it to expire and be snapped up by one of their competitors. What these people fail to realize, however, is that they’re not really renewing their domain names; they’re actually transferring them from their original domain registrars to DRoA and getting scammed out of quite a bit of cash (a $30/year asking price is actually an obscene amount of money to ask for a domain).

Many people tend to forget where they’ve registered their domains once they’ve had them for a while, so when these official-looking “courtesy” notes come in, domain owners assume they’re from their original registrar. Red flags should go up when the owner receives another e-mail after he’s made his payment asking him to confirm the transfer (rather than the renewal that was advertised), but if the flags fail to launch the transaction will go in DRoA’s books and the domain will be in its clutches.  

Once a domain owner realizes he’s been duped, it’s often quite difficult for him to transfer the domain back to his former, fairly priced registrar. DRoA’s customer service reps are notoriously heinous to work with, and why wouldn’t they be? DRoA wants its customers’ money, not their satisfaction.

DRoA claims its e-mails and letters are simply part of a marketing scheme, but the FTC has gotten involved and slapped DRoA’s wrists for its deceptive practices. In response, DRoA added an almost imperceptible  note to their correspondences to let sleuthy customers know that DRoA had taken some liberties with the English language and is using “renew” and “transfer” interchangeably. Today the company continues to send out bogus e-mails and letters that mislead countless domain holders.

If your website is maintained by an outside management company, it’s almost inconceivable that they wouldn’t keep tabs on when and with whom your domain will need to be renewed. If you manage your own site, keep a record of where your domain is registered and when it’s up for renewal. And any time you receive an email requesting payment from a source you’re not immediately familiar with, do a bit of research to ensure it’s not a scam: you’ll almost always discover that the 12 enslaved Nigerian princesses who are trying to raise funds to purchase an inflatable raft that they can use to paddle to freedom aren’t actually princesses at all.

Blogs are absolutely soaring in popularity these days. It seems like everyone from our airlines to our hairdressers are publishing something online. But why? What makes blogs such an important social media tool that Marriott and Coke have decided to adopt them? And more importantly, what separates a good blog from a not-so-good one?

The first thing every social media person should know before diving into the blogosphere is what a blog is and what a blog isn’t. Technically what a blog is is a website that people update semi-regularly with news, information, commentary, or just general day-to-day details. Blogs can either be professional or personal, and both types have their own unique set of guidelines. As far a business bloggers are concerned, a proper blog is—

A Whole Slew of Pages that Search Engines can Index
Any blog platform worth its salt will give each of your posts its own unique URL, which means that every entry you post will be a page that Google can index. If you’re a chef and restaurant proprietor, odds are that you didn’t devote a main page of your site to your love affair with Wusthof knives. However, if you write a post about why you love your Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu sandwich knife for slicing cucumbers, searchers could potentially find your restaurant by way of Googling  a combination of Wusthof + knife + cucumber + sandwich (trust me, stranger search combos have been Googled).

A Place Where You Answer Frequently Asked Questions
If you hear a question a lot, why not post a thorough answer on your blog? You should answer the customer queries immediately, of course, but you could also direct them to your blog if the answer is particularly long or complicated. And chances are, if many people are asking you, many more are asking Google, and wouldn’t it be nice if a few of those Googlers happened upon your company’s blog and used your services?

A Place Where You Demonstrate Your Expertise
When potential customers visit your website, they want to know that your company is the best one for the job. If your blog is full of well-written, informative posts, customers will know immediately that the people behind your business are capable and competent.  

Updated Regularly
I’m not saying you have to update your blog every day, but if there are month-long gaps between posts, old readers will lose interest and you won’t accumulate any news one. A loved blog is an effective blog, so try to keep your update schedule consistent.

Now for what a proper blog is not—

A Billboard
Entries about why your creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip is the best and/or better than the creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip down the street aren’t going to be all that useful. Sure, you can post an occasional announcement or promote a product, but by and large blogs aren’t really intended to be hubs for blatant advertising. If you want to post about the 22nd Annual Half-Price Oyster Week at your restaurant, consider doing so in an interesting way (perhaps you could post about how Oyster Week grew into the tradition that it is today or about which wines go best with fried and raw oysters).

A Will/Business Proposal/Other Official Document
A blog is a pretty informal thing, so have fun when you’re writing it! Use contractions and colloquialisms when they’re appropriate. Joke with the reader. Just remember that the voice behind your blog is the voice of your company, so keep it professional and keep it consistent with your company’s image.

Remember that above all else, good blogs are the ones that people find interesting and valuable. If people like what you’re saying, they’ll come back for more, and there’s a pretty good chance that if something you write is especially useful or fresh, it will get passed around, which could translate into more exposure for your business and potentially more money in your pocket.

You’ve probably noticed that Facebook’s been making some changes to their Pages of late. Now, instead of becoming a “Fan” of something, we can “Like” it. According to Facebook, this change “offers [users] a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which [they] are interested.” In other words, it’s all about semantics rather than functionality. Personally I’m not a fan (har har!) of the new name because I think it can be easily confused with Facebook’s other “Like” feature that corresponds to videos, status updates, pictures, etc. (“Liking” the Cheetos Page is not the same as “Liking” a picture of your friend’s new baby. “Liking” a Page is the equivalent of subscribing to it forever [or at least until you decide to opt out]; “Liking” friends’ activities is more spontaneous –it’s commentary that’s there today and gone tomorrow.)    

Most of that’s neither here nor there, of course, since it won’t really affect how you go about your Facebook business. What’s really important is the change that Facebook is still rolling out: the Community Page.  

The Facebook Pages that we know and love (Facebook calls these “Official Pages”) are intended to help us connect to the artists, performers, organizations, and products that we like and are created and maintained by third-parties (PR people, business owners, and marketers) in the interest of promotion. The Community Pages that are in the works are different: they are meant for causes and issues rather than brands. Anyone can create a Community Page, but Facebook has already made 6 million Community Pages for a variety of activities, interests, places, etc. While they’re still intended to be places for like-minded people to gather and talk about a shared interested, Community Pages also supposed to be collections of information on whatever topic they’ve been created for. (Each Community Page will feature its related Wikipedia article.)

 If it hasn’t done so already, Facebook will soon suggest both Official and Community Pages to you based on the location, school, activities, interests, movies, music, and television shows you’ve listed on your profile (for instance, if you’ve listed your hometown as Dallas, Texas, Facebook may suggest that you connect to the Dallas, Texas Community Page). If you choose to connect to these Community Pages, Facebook will replace the text on your profile with links to the Pages. The idea is that eventually, most of the information on your profile will be visual and connected to other pages within the site. In other words, Facebook doesn’t want your profile to be an island anymore—if your profile says you're from Dallas, Facebook wants to connect you with others from Dallas.

You can select as few or as many Community Pages as you’d like to display in your profile, and you can always delete or add Community Pages as your interests and favorites change. Once you make a connection to a Community Page, it will have access to anything you post about it, so if you label a video as “My brother driving a Ferrari thru Dallas, Texas!” that video will show up in the “Related Posts” section of the Dallas, Texas Page that you’re connected to (for you Twitter users, think of it as Facebook's version of "Real-Time Search Results"). Also, unlike Official Pages whose administrators send out messages to their Fans’ (oops, “connections’”) News Feeds, Community Page updates will not show up in the News Feed—you will actually have to visit the Page to get information. 

As I mentioned before, Facebook is still in the process of making the switch to Community Pages and connected profiles, so their impact, true functionality, and the public’s reception really remain to be seen. 

On April 3, Apple released the newest member of its uber-popular family into the world, and technophiles were so jazzed that they snapped up over 600,000 iPads in five short days. But Apple-hungry consumers weren’t the only ones who were excited about the iPad—most* of the web’s biggest social players were pretty darned enthused as well, and they weren’t afraid to show it:

Google: To take full advantage of the large iPad screen, Google reformatted Gmail. The two-column display is basically an enhanced version of the single column Gmail for Mobile app that was created for the iPhone and Android. (Some Gmail users even argue that Gmail for the iPad is an enhanced version of traditional Gmail and are going to great lengths to make it their desktop default.)
Flickr: The photo and video sharing site gleefully announced on its blog that it would be making its videos iPad-compatible by introducing HTML5 playback. (Until very recently, nearly all websites embedded videos using Flash, but since the iPad doesn’t support Flash, sites are switching their vids over to HTML5 to keep up.)  
WordPress: WordPress also trumpeted its foray into iPad territory on its blog (a move that was actually quite apropos and vaguely existential). The blogging website has released a new version of its iPhone app that’s compatible with the iPad and comes equipped with all sorts of fun features like the ability to geotag blog updates.
YouTube: I found nary a peep about the iPad on the YouTube blog, but Apple was very vocal on the video giant’s behalf. The iPad comes with a built-in YouTube app, which, like big brother Gmail, is formatted to suit the iPad screen.
Facebook: Facebook has been making apps for Apple products since the beginning of time, so everyone was waiting to see what it had in store for the iPad. As it turns out, what it had in store was nothing. More accurately, a Facebook app was in the works for the iPad, but its life was cut short when its programmer took issue with the App Store screening process and quit the project. Some Tom, Dick, or Steve did create a Facebook app called Facebook Ultimate, but it developed a horrible reputation among iPad users (and infringed on the Facebook copyright to boot) and Apple has since removed it from the App Store. There is a bit of hope for the disgruntled Facebook user, and it comes in the form of http://touch.facebook.com/, which is a stripped down version of regular old Facebook that fits better on the iPad screen.
    
*Twitter is conspicuously absent from this list, and with good reason—the micro-blogging phenom didn’t go to any lengths to adapt itself to the iPad. Happily for tweet-o-holics, however, the App Store has been flooded with third-party Twitter apps (the ones from TweetDeck and Twitterific are said to be particularly excellent) that pick up the slack. 

If you’re one of the lucky few techies who’s already gotten his hands on an iPad, go ahead and tweet, blog, email, or update your Facebook status about how you’re tweeting, blogging, emailing, or updating your Facebook status with your all-powerful fingertips. Those of us old-fashioned mice-and-keyboard folks will be mighty jealous indeed.

“What’s the difference between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page?” When we’re talking social media marketing, this question is practically inevitable, and it’s almost always followed by “Why would I choose one over the other?” and/or “Do I need both?” These are all perfectly sensible inquiries, as anyone who’s seen examples of both knows that they’re almost identical:

(Click to enlarge.)

So, “What’s the difference?”
The Tabs: By default, Groups and Pages have the exact same tabs: Wall, Info, Photos, Videos, Events, and Discussion. Page owners, however, can take it a step farther by adding Notes, third-party, and custom tabs (as Diet Coke has done in our example) if they want to communicate with fans in a different way.

The Administrator: Both Groups and Pages have admins who update the tabs and monitor the activity of members and fans. When a Group administrator posts something to the Group’s wall, the post is labeled with the administrator’s name (EX: Sarah Norman I love Diet Coke!). When a Page administrator posts something to the Page’s wall, on the other hand, the post is labeled with the Page’s name (EX: Diet Coke Beware of Mentos!).

The Control: When you create a Group, you have the power to customize how members can interact within it. If you don’t want Group members to post pictures, videos, or comments on the wall, you can check the Admin Only boxes. Pages don’t give you the power to limit interaction, which means once someone’s a fan of the Page, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

The Updates: When an administrator posts something new within a Group, the only people who see it are the people who visit the Group. Some perspective: I’ve been a member of the same 16 Groups for about four years. I haven’t checked a single one of them in about three and a half. When administrators post something to a Page, every single fan sees it on his or her news feed (home page) almost immediately. More perspective: When I logged into Facebook this morning, the first thing I saw on my news feed was an April Fool’s Day prank from RecipeZaar.

The Point: Groups are to Pages as NESs are to Wiis—great in their time, but more or less obsolete now that the other, more functional model is available. When Facebook began, Groups were places people could go to discuss their interests with like-minded Facebook users. Then and now, people started Groups, other people joined, discussed the Group topic for a few days, and then more or less forgot about it. Pages are essentially Groups 2.0—not only can like-minded fans discuss the Page topic with each other, they can also receive updates about it from the Page administrator.
 
“Why would I choose one over the other?”
Social media marketing is all about maintaining open communication between a brand and its customers. The best way to facilitate that communication is by letting your customers know you want to talk to them, which means putting your name on a message and getting it in front of their faces. The second best way to facilitate communication is by making all sorts of communication channels available to your customers, which means adding appropriate new tabs and encouraging customers to interact with the brand. With this in mind, the question really becomes “why in the world would anyone choose a Group over a Page?”

“Do I need both?”
While it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have both, it really wouldn’t help much either: everything Groups can do, Pages can do better. You should hang on to a Group if you already have one, but save the updates for you Page so more people will see them.

For the most part, the Internet is a very free-thinking and progressive sort of place—store owners can make sales regardless of the time of day, writers can publish whatever they want regardless of their experience, and web surfers can go anywhere and say anything regardless of their age, religion, or haircut. There is something about you, though, that many less refined websites can’t help but notice, and that something is your web browser.

Websites don’t necessarily mean to discriminate against users based on their browser preference—it usually just happens when websites aren’t developed with a wealth of browsers in mind, which results in websites that are more compatible with one browser than another.

If you’ve been using the Internet for more than, say, two weeks, you’ve no doubt experienced some browser compatibility issues—perhaps you’ve visited a site that looked misaligned or noticed elements and/or text that were oddly spaced. Those little quirks probably would have been nonexistent in another browser (the browser the site was designed in, for example) but in your forgotten browser they stick out like a sore, bothersome thumb. So why don’t all websites look the same in all browsers? Well, because…

Browsers are developed by humans. The browser you’re using to view this page is a translation device that has turned lines code into a site that you can read easily. The World Wide Web consortium establishes basic rules for translating HTML documents, but the rules are not hard and fast, which gives browser developers considerable room to interpret and bend them. When the crackerjack engineers at Mozilla developed Firefox, they did so with an interpretation of the rules that differed slightly from that of the wiz kids at Apple. This means that…

Browsers translate code differently. All browsers are here to make web surfing possible for everyone, not just people who are well-versed in HTML. However, each browser has a slightly different way of translating the language of the Web, and these differences manifest themselves in the way a website appears to visitors. It’s sort of like this: while a Brit and an American are visiting Spain, they happen upon a restaurant advertising its “papas fritas,” and they’re suddenly both hungry for fried wedges of potato. The Brit suggests they stop in for “chips,” and the American announces that he’s hungry for “French fries.” You see? Same meaning, different appearance. It’s also worth mentioning in the same breath that…

Browsers do not use dictionaries. If the travelers in the last example made it to France and neither spoke French, they’d pass by a restaurant famous for “pommes frites” without giving fried potatoes a second thought. Browsers do this too—if they don’t recognize code, they ignore it, which can result in major inconsistencies across different browsers. Of course, even browsers of the same origin have compatibility issues because…

The language of the Web is constantly evolving. A cutting edge website might look great in IE8 and wonky in IE6 even if the exact same Microsoft super-humans coded the browsers because IE6 isn’t capable of reading newer Web code. “But IE6 is so 2001,” say you, “Surely no one is using it anymore.” On the contrary: many internet users are happy as can be with the functionality of their older browsers and see no benefit in upgrading.
The good news is that because we know what causes browser compatibility issues, we also know how to fix browser compatibility issues. Namely by:

• Coding things a number of different ways so that all browsers understand
• Not using super-secret, just-released code
• Not using exclusive, browser-specific code

The better news is that even though there are hundreds of free browsers out there just itching to translate Web code, the general public only uses seven of them—IE6, 7, 8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera (eight when IE9 comes out later this year)—which means no one will have to dedicate his or her life to making sure your website is coded for every single browser that’s ever been or ever will be developed. However, code changes often and new versions of browsers regularly become available for download to keep up with the evolving Web, so it’s possible that a site that looks perfect in the Big Seven browsers today may need to be tweaked (or overhauled) tomorrow to accommodate progress.

If you’re a website owner, it’s important that you make sure your site looks clean and professional in all the major browsers (you can get an idea of how your site looks in different browsers at Browsershots.org). It’s also important to keep any eye on changes in browsers and code so that your site can continue to treat all of its visitors equally. 

When I wake up on a Saturday morning and I’m in the mood for pancakes, I don’t go to the YellowPages to find diner listings—I go to Google to find and compare menus. When I back my car into a tree and need someone to pop the dent out, I don’t spend a year watching the newspaper for ads—I go to Google to find a deal. The point: it’s darned near impossible to own a business these days without also owning a website. Trouble is, a lot of business owners think that “owning a website” means jiggering two or three pages together and then never touching them again (or worse, paying good money for a professional-looking site and then failing to keep it updated). Successful websites are not static—they are tweaked, updated, and retooled so they don’t get stale. Successful websites are, in a word, managed, and if you follow these simple site-management musts, your website will continue looking as shiny as it did the day it rolled off the development server.
          
You must check for broken links and programming errors regularly.
Arguably nothing is more frustrating to a site visitor than clicking on an interesting link only to find that it’s broken, or trying to leave feedback and discovering indecipherable code where the form should be. Successful site management means making sure your site continues to work as it is was designed to do.

You must keep things consistent and up-to-date.
Consider this: It’s 1999 and a toy store is about to launch its very first website that’s full of bright colors, beveled buttons, animated graphics, and frames.  Around this time, the toy store staff gets tickets to an advanced screening of Star Wars Episode 1 and decides to post a picture on the homepage of the store owners standing outside the theater in full Jedi uniform. Website visitors think the toy store is trendy, and customers flock to it to get their hands on Darth Maul action figures.

Now it’s 2009: the site’s colors are still bright, the buttons are still beveled (except for the new one that was tacked on when the Wii was released in 2005), the graphics are still spinning, the frames are still frames, and that Episode 1 picture is still on the homepage. Website visitors think Jar Jar Binks was annoying; they want the U.S.S. Enterprise collectible ship. They wonder if you are even still in business. They go somewhere with more modern offerings. Successful site management means making sure your pictures, content, and design are contemporary and consistent so that your customers stick around.

You must freshen up the content.
Soon after a site is launched, a search engine’s web crawlers will visit and scan the content for keywords. The crawlers will come back again in about a week, but if they don’t read anything new, they won’t come back again for two weeks. Then four, then eight, then sixteen. If you announce a promotion during week nine, the search engines (and, by extension, potential customers) won’t know about it until nearly two months later. However, if a site manager regularly adds or tweaks content, s/he gives the crawlers a reason to come back more often, so that when a promotion announcement is launched, web searchers have a chance to find it before it ends. Successful site management means making sure the web crawlers are always coming back for more.

You must find out how pages are performing.
You may sell dog biscuits, table linens, and souvenir shot glasses in your shop around the corner, but if website visitors are devouring the pages you’ve devoted to treats and ignoring everything else, you know some parts of your website are not pulling their weight. Successful site management means monitoring the site’s performance and taking steps to improve it.  

You must not overpay for site management.
Theoretically, anyone can be a site manager. However, website management is not easy task, and your current staff is already busy enough, which means you’d probably have a hire a new person with the right technical and creative credentials just to keep up with the website. That person will expect a salary, insurance, a 401k, paid vacation, and maybe even your first born son. That person will also expect to be paid for the time s/he spends learning about your website management system. A professional, on the other hand, will expect nothing more than a comparatively low monthly or yearly maintenance fee. And (added bonus!) since s/he will likely already have web management experience, all you’ll pay for is service.

Your website is a marketing tool. You wouldn’t let the same television ads and radio spots run indefinitely, so why would you let time wear away an idle website? Don’t allow your website to fail your business: get someone to manage it, stat!

In late 2006, rumors swirled that Google was thinking about purchasing Facebook for a cool $2.6 bil (or maybe less, depending on how willing you were to believe the hype). In the end, Facebook decided to remain independent (a move that seems to have worked to their advantage so far) leaving Google social network-less. Of course, Google is never, ever willing to be outdone, so a few weeks ago the search giant rolled out its very own social network—Buzz.

Buzz is part of Gmail, which Google (rightly) claims has always been a social network waiting to happen. Buzz allows users to create profiles and update their statuses just like its social network competitors, but it’s also sort of like an RSS feed on crack: Users can link any number of social media accounts that they already have (including Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, Google Reader, and YouTube accounts) to their Buzz account so that when they update these networks, the updates automatically appear to their friends on Buzz as well.

Google believes that by promoting Buzz on the Gmail platform, they are giving it distinct advantages over social network numero uno, Facebook. For one thing, users don’t have to search for new friends—Buzz recognizes who's friends with whom via users' Gmail contacts and connects them automatically. Google also boasts that by integrating Buzz into Gmail, users will be able to track Buzz alerts and respond to them without having to follow links and log in to an outside site.
 
Still, with 400 million users, Facebook is without a doubt the top social media dog, and it doesn't seem poised to budge. But social network and media sites are certainly not immortal—before Facebook came along, MySpace was king, and now it’s virtually dead (well, at least as far as people over the age of 16 are concerned). The trouble with MySpace was that it felt incredibly juvenile—users decorated their profiles with sporty and sparkly princess themes, added music that assaulted profile visitors, and “totally wunted u 2 luk @ there pics from SpRiNg BrEaK”! Facebook toppled MySpace because it was cleaner, offered only a single, standardized layout, and promised users increased privacy (it was open only to college students once upon a time, you know).

For all the bells and whistles and apps and Pages that it has added since its inception, Facebook continues to feel like a social network that’s adult and “with it.”  And Facebook users, in spite of their moaning about the endless (and senseless) redesigns, constantly changing privacy settings, and annoying calls to “Join my mafia!” and “Help me raise my barn!” are largely pretty content with Facebook—their friends, their pictures, their videos, and their wall posts are all there, after all. Buzz might catch on among a few Gmail users (in an “I’m here so I’ll give it a try” sort of way) but unless Buzz offers a feature that Facebook absolutely cannot duplicate (and we know from the Twitter-like “live feed” that Facebook will try) it’s hard to believe that the Facebook Empire would actually lose a significant number of its users to the new kid in the Google-verse.

On June 13, 2009, Facebook began allowing its users to claim usernames (also known as “vanity URLs”) so that they could direct friends to their profiles more easily (instead of www.facebook.com/people/Joe-Blow/4815162342, profile URLs could now be www.facebook.com/joeblow). On most other social networking sites, vanity URLs are the default (Twitter users, for example, would be aghast if they suddenly had to tell people to follow them @/people/Joe-Blow/4815162342) but before June 13, Facebook users could only direct friends to find them by looking them up.

These usernames were made available for Pages too, but there was a catch: Only the Pages that could boast 1,000+ fans were eligible. That number eventually jumped down to 100, and now Facebook says all Pages with at least 25 fans are eligible. Once you’ve reached that magic number, all you have to do to claim your username is:

• Visit http://www.facebook.com/username/.
  *You may be prompted to enter a cell phone number so Facebook can verify your account via text message.
• Click on “Set a Username for your Pages.”
  
• Select your Page from the dropdown and name away.
  *Usernames must be at least 5 characters long and can only be changed one time after they are set, so choose wisely!

So what’s the big fuss over usernames? Aren’t Pages assigned the same long URLs as profiles? Couldn’t you just use that to tell people about your Page? Well, yes and sort of. If you want to use the long URL to create text and  links, no one will know the difference. But what if you want to put your Facebook address on your business card (and you should want to)? The cumbersome /pages/My-Biz/001100101 is certainly less user-friendly than /MyBiz. What if you are talking to a friend about your business and you want to inform him about your Facebook Page? Would you rather try to remember to email him the URL the next time you are at your computer, or just say, “You should check out our Facebook Page at facebook.com/MyBiz!”? What if you're sponsoring a bake sale or a half-marathon team? Rather than packaging your cakes and your runners in boxes and t-shirts marked with your name and an easy-to-miss Facebook logo, you can instead send them out sporting the easy-to-remember Facebook.com/MyBiz URL. Simply put, a Facebook Page with a vanity URL is easier to advertise than a Facebook Page without.

If you’ve reached the magic fan number, take a few seconds today to claim your username before someone else takes the one you want. It might not be the secret to instant Facebook superstardom, but it’ll definitely make it easier for you to promote, promote, promote.