Two Slashes

Chances are, if you’ve logged into Facebook anytime in the past two days or so, you were probably greeted by the following notification above your news feed informing you of Facebook’s switch to usernames.  (Of course, it was also probably readable , but I like trying not to overrun the sidebar.)  For a service that has long required you to refer to yourself by number, almost as if you were helpfully and willfully subjecting yourself to a prison sentence (and there are reasons for me selecting this metaphor in particular, but they’re outside the scope of this post), the ability to individually identify yourself on your own terms is quite a jump.

Despite this huge change for Facebook, though, I think I’ve still seen more posts about Twitter (alright, I get it, it’s the hot new thing thanks to Oprah, but there’s only so many times I can read about a new startup *cough*Spymaster*cough* without looking for the nearest stabbing implement to use on myself) show up in Google Reader or on Digg or Reddit.  So, what’s the big deal?

I suppose you could think of this in terms of license plates.  You could go with whatever random assortment of letters and numbers your state assigns you when you register your car, and play along regardless of if you get W376JSB or 3826273, or you could jump through whatever hoops are required and get a plate that has your name, IRC nickname, or favorite type of cheese on it.  This is Facebook’s equivalent to giving you vanity plates for that Camaro of yours.  You know, unless prison numbers are your thing.

Of course, all cool news has to come with some strings attached, and Facebook is of course not one of those extremely rare exceptions.  However, according to the Facebook Blog, they’re rather tame things like that you can only use the “Romanized alphabet” (I think someone meant to say “Latin” here, and it’s not me), numbers, and periods.  (There’s the obvious technical issue of using things like question marks, hash marks, and ampersands in a URL here to blame.)  That shouldn’t be a big deal, though.  It’s not like you can put an interrobang on your license plate, though Facebook also warns that they’re looking into extended character support.  Of course, once you claim a name, you can’t change it (which is not the case over at Twitter, though MySpace still wrote your name in permanent marker the last time I was there), so there’s no gaming the system to reserve “CutiePie” for your girlfriend…you know, unless YOU want to be referred to as “CutiePie” (and who wouldn’t?).

Once you reserve that name, you get the awesome perk of being able to use facebook.com/yourusernamehere to refer new friends directly to your profile instead of making them search for you, dig through all the people with similar names to find the one with the right network and picture (if you have a reasonably useful picture, that is), and worry for three days about whether they attempted to befriend the right person or not.

Being the technical weenie I am, the rules Facebook imposed also gave me a slew of ideas of how Facebook could improve this system.  I put my head together with Nick Schwab, and we came up with the following in less than a minute:

• Since those “Romanized” characters are more or less the only legal characters in a domain name (excepting the hyphen), it would be easy for Facebook to give users a subdomain rather than append their name to the end.  In an ideal circumstance, both methods would work the same way, but it might provide for more “ownership” of that username and profile if a subdomain were used instead.  (If you’re not following me, think yourusername.facebook.com as opposed to that example above.)
• Facebook could use these unique URLs (either the method I’ve suggested using subdomains or Facebook’s original implementation) to support OpenID, an identification technology that you might have heard of considering its extensive use here on this blog.  Considering Facebook seems to want a piece of the identity market (Facebook Connect, anyone?), allowing users to use this would be a feature I suggest they implement.
• Again, excepting hypens, the character range covers everything usable in an e-mail address.
  • Perhaps Facebook will allow users to send e-mail to username@facebook.com, which would be a great way to get in touch with people without them having to make their e-mail address public.  Admittedly, this kind of detracts from the use of Facebook’s built-in messaging.
  • If Facebook went after the subdomain system I outlined above, they would be in a great position to provide an e-mail-based interface to the site, something that would make Facebook accessible from an even wider range of devices and platforms.  Perhaps sending a note to wall@username.facebook.com would allow you to post on someone’s wall remotely, while message@ would provide the same functionality as sending a private message.  Want to post some photos?  Attach them to a note and fire it off to photos@, where they’ll immediately be added to an album titled by your subject line.

Some people aren’t as happy about the change, though.  I vaguely recall one person (I don’t recollect where I saw it or who said it, so if it was you, speak up in the comments) comparing Facebook to MySpace in this respect, saying that the former is moving towards the latter in terms of usability and obnoxious features, and another person suggesting that this is just the next step in Facebook’s transition to “become” Twitter.

Of course, I could be the world’s biggest idiot for getting excited over this (to the point where it’s managed to be added to my Google Calendar), but I’ll gladly be one of the first people to claim their name.  So, what do you think?  Are you going to be eagerly waiting for a chance to prove how much of a “Cool.Kid.123″ you are, or would you like those prisoner numbers tattooed onto your neck?