Facebook’s Name Game

When you enter Kennebunk, ME on Route 1 driving North, you are greeted by a sign that says “Welcome to Kennebunk. The only village in the world so named.”

While Kennebunk may not need to worry about its identity, many companies are very concerned about making sure they have control over use of their name, and related brands. Up until now that hasn’t been so easy on the social networking site Facebook.

At the end of May, that changed somewhat as Facebook announced that they would allow users to set up “vanity URLs” for their profiles and pages. There were some restrictions though. The profiles needed to have been established before the announcement, and they needed to have acquired at least 1,000 fans/friends by May 31. The signup would be available to qualified profiles at midnight on Friday June 12th. Subsequently Facebook announced that there would be a second round of registrations available later in June for everyone else. As it turns out there was still a 100 fan/friend limit on these and the signup again became available in the middle of the night.

Compared to sites like MySpace and Twitter, Facebook seems to be creating a lot of obstacles for companies seeking to stake their claim. I think it’s worth examining why—and looking at what they trying to protect? I think for one thing they are trying to avoid a lot of the domain squatting issues that plagued the early internet. But more importantly, I think they are trying to retain authenticity. While it seems that Facebook is sort of making up their strategy as they go along, they are making an effort to give marketers some of what they want and at the same time, trying to enforce a degree of good citizenship. Which is not a bad thing.

What social media has taught us (at least those of us who are listening) is that a company’s brand or a person’s reputation can’t stand in place of real interaction. And this is a radical change of thinking for a culture that has been driven since the 50s on the idea of brand loyalty. Increasingly these days you need to walk the walk every day, be listening, be involved and be authentic with your customers or the value of your brand or reputation is going to go down.  And again, that’s not a bad thing. As Shakespeare wrote:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”