234769 Resource 187691 21 21 1244873420545 1244910766048 Controlled The Great Facebook Land Grab

Over 1,000,000 Facebook vanity URLs registered in the first 66 minutes.

<img title="Facebook Land Grab" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 15px 5px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="202" alt="Facebook Land Grab" src="docs/facebook-land-grab_3.jpg" width="268" align="left" border="0">Yep, kids, I remember it liken it wuz just an hour ago.  Twitter wuz all a buzz for days 'bout the coming rush for Facebook vanity URLs that wuz to take place at 12:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time on that there mornin' of June 13, 2009.  So wuz all the great online journals back in them days — InformationWeek, ZDNet, Mashable, The Daily Beast, ... you know, all the mainstream journals. There I wuz, sittin' at my keyboard at 11:59 AM Eastern Daylight Time on the night of June 12, 2009—just hittin' F5 awaitin for the big day.  Then just like that, I seen it.  I could register my own user name on Facebook. I wuz one of the lucky ones.  I struck solid gold.  I grabbed <a title="F. Andy Seidl on Facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/faseidl" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/faseidl</a> fer my very own.  It wuz incredible.  It matched my Twitter name, my blogsite domain name, my e-mail name, my Intense Debate nickname, you name it.  Then I got double lucky cuz I ran over to Carol's laptop and I grabbed fer her <a title="Carol A. Seidl on Facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/caseidl" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/caseidl</a>.  Unbelievable. Then I just sat back and waited for the SEO to kick in and watch my traffic spike. <img title="Land Rush" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="134" alt="Land Rush" src="http://faseidl.com/docs/land-rush_3.jpg" width="244" align="right" border="0"> While I wuz waitin' I wuz Twitterin' with a bunch of nice folks that were all a gettin' their own vanity URLs.  One nice fella named <a title="Follow @skydiver on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/skydiver" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@skydiver</a> wuz even talking to another guy named <a title="Follow Mashable on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/Mashable" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@Mashable</a> (they have funny names sometimes on Twitter) and they wuz a sayin' that in the first hour and six minutes over a million folks grabbed their own vanity URLs. Then another guy named <a title="Follow nullsession on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/nullsession" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@nullsession</a> (see what I mean about funny names?) wuz sayin' that somebody should just hurry on up and get it over with and make a special app that would find and friend all of a persons Twitter friends, but this time in Facebook.  And I guess it wuz a pretty good idea because not five minutes later this other guy named <a title="Follow AdamPieniazek on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/AdamPieniazek" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@AdamPieniazek</a> (see what I mean again?) wuz a tweetin' that Facebook wuz a warnin' him that he wuz friendin' folks too fast and they wuz gonna get mad at him (but I don't think they ever really did cause about 85% friended him back right away.) After just a few minutes, the first Facebook vanity URLs were already fer sale on this web site called <a href="http://www.assetize.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.assetize.com</a> and it wuz someone sellin' "alex".  But this one guy named <a title="Follow Jesse on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/Jesse" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@Jesse</a> on Twitter wuz askin' how could a body be sellin' a 4-letter name when 5-letter name's wuz the minimum you could register unlessen one of them Facebook people wuz already sellin' their own special rules name. Anyway, there wuz lots of chit chat (ya know, tweetin') about that kind of stuff for a long time and then it wuz pretty much over.  Turned out I didn't never get a huge traffic spike because of special SEO juice from my Facebook URL.  But that Facebook company sure got lots a good PR, and later on for a while, they got lots a search referrals to Facebook-branded user profile pages which I guess helped them out for a while. No matter, a couple years later, there wuz a whole bunch a new ways folks wuz hookin' up online and not too many folks wuz chattin' about Facebook no more.  It wuz still around for a few more years after that, but eventually it got to be kinda like Compuserve and them others. But yesiree, I wuz there in them wild 66 minutes fer the great Facebook Land Grab of aught 9.  It wuz pure crazy. 10 application/xml false Facebook Twitter humor MySmartChannels/6 (mailto:info@myst-technology.com; MyST Blogsite MetaWeblog API 6.00.0110) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 205.145.142.200 false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 234776 Resource 188081 173239 21 1244906647793 1244909854886 Controlled RE: The Great Facebook Land Grab

What's with all the slang?

Andy, Did you write this?  Doesn't look like your style of writing! 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB6; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 234780 Resource 188081 21 21 1244910344950 1244910873733 Controlled RE: The Great Facebook Land Grab

Yea, its my style... (just a seldom used part of it ;-)

Well, it's funny what strikes you (er, me) as funny at 3AM.  But imagine an old cowboy out west talking about the <a title="Land Run of 1889" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Run_of_1889" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Great Land Rush</a> decades after it took place. 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB6; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 234782 Resource 188081 173239 21 1244914687724 1244918519465 Controlled RE: The Great Facebook Land Grab

I totally got the style.  It was cool :) 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB6; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 234788 Resource 188081 173239 21 1244921151368 1244927814206 Controlled RE: The Great Facebook Land Grab

The SEO thing, I don't think it's really going to boost traffic, but will make sure someone else doesn't rank for your name. For a few minutes I considered going after bostonblogger or something around that, but then realized if the other two Adam Pieniazeks on facebook grabbed facebook.com/adampieniazek, they would outrank me for my own name on google.  The people who put keywords in their usernames will get some SEO juice at some point, but it'll be to their facebook page. If properly set up it could generate business but for me it was more important to "protect" my name. 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB6; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web