Facebook “Gold Rush” coming soon

There’s a new gold rush coming. Soon. Maybe even this week.

You will find yourself scrambling like Barney Barnato for a piece of the action. Yes, folks, it’s been speculated for a while, and now the rumour mills are saying that you will be able to get a vanity URL for Facebook.

A what? A vanity URL allows for people to easily find you - instead of your profile page being http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=643694539 (that’s me) you will be able to register something like www.facebook.com/SteveMathew - looks better huh?

If you were rich, famous or knew-people-who-knew-people at Facebook HQ you could already get one. For example www.facebook.com/barackobama or www.facebook.com/OprahWinfreyShow or www.facebook.com/seinfeld But for the rest of us, this wasn’t an option. Till now.

It’s not clear if Facebook intends charging for this feature. I would think they could and raise plenty of cash. 225 million peeps multiplied by 10% take up multiplied by say 10 dollars (same price as a domain name) looks good to me. And that’s excluding annuity revenue from renewals.

I can see a land grab here for some prime social media real estate. Imagine owning www.facebook.com/nike or www.facebook.com/iphone or www.facebook.com/speeddating !

I also see an after-market for on-selling this real estate.

Would you get a Vanity URL?