I wanted to bring to your attention that Facebook is about to allow ‘vanity’ URLs to be registered beginning at midnight tonight. This means that instead of having a web address that’s an incoherent string of numbers or letters, you can now have a Facebook Profile or Page with a ‘name’. So, instead of having an address that looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=987654321 it could look like this: http://www.facebook.com/affectstrategies. (Groups are not eligible for Facebook username URLs at the moment.)
This means that individuals can register/request the names of the URL that they would like – it also means that they could pick a company name or word that you may have trademarked rights to.
(Article in San Francisco Business Times on this – http://bit.ly/qfxbg )
In order to protect your trademarks, you can fill out a form on Facebook right now to prevent someone from taking your trademarked name. So, for example, we registered Affect Strategies (company) and Tech Affect (blog). You may want to register your company name, products/services or other trademarked names you own. Here is the short form that you need to fill out. It only takes a few moments: Facebook Online Form – http://bit.ly/IyaKY
I highly recommend that you take a few moments to protect your trademarks by filling out this simple form. That way, if you decide in the future to create a presence on Facebook, you will not have to wrestle with the User or Facebook to get it back.
If you would like to register your own user name, you can do so here at midnight – http://www.facebook.com/username/
For more information on this topic in general, visit Facebook Username Help – http://www.facebook.com/help.php?topic=username
Facebook is currently saying that it will not allow transfers in order prevent ’squatters’ from trying to profit from false claims to a Username but it does reserve the right to revoke or deny a name.
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