Vanity Web Addresses Available to Facebook Users: The Latest Trend in Online Social Networking May be the Next Big Challenge for Trademark Owners

In an effort to make it easier for people to find and connect with one another online, social networking provider Facebook, Inc., is offering its users the opportunity to create custom usernames to identify themselves in the URLs for their profile pages. At 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9, 2009, Facebook announced its plan to replace the randomly assigned numerical labels for its individual member folders (e.g., http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=7080706), with user-selected web addresses for personal profiles and Facebook pages (e.g., http://www.facebook.com/dorsey.whitney). Facebook claims that the new Facebook URLs will be like a “personal destination, or home, on the Web” for its users. Not only will it be possible to find particular Facebook profiles by using individual names as search terms in Facebook searches, internet users will be able to locate these pages by performing Google searches of individual usernames.

Katina C. Banks

Erin Hogan

Full Story: http://www.dorsey.com/facebook_trademarks/