Did You Get Your Facebook User Name?

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According to reports over 200K Facebook User names were grabbed in the first 3 minutes and 500,000 were gone in the first 15 minutes.

I tried to get “domain” “domains”, “domainname” and “domainnames” however, none were available.  Checking this morning none of these are resolving so I’m not sure why they weren’t available.

I settled on using thedomains, so our facebook page is facebook.com/thedomains

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Tony says

    Mike,

    Some generics like dentist, music, money, business, movies etc are not allowed by facebook.

    I got “dentists”…

  5. JS says

    I tried a smaller beach destination the second it started and it was unavailable. Still doesn’t resolve (while the name I did get resolves)…….so I am thinking there was more to this then released.

    Today’s Facebook was yesterday’s MySpace, which was Friendster and GeoCities before that.

    My point, sooner or later Facebook won’t be cool anymore.

  7. MHB says

    Jason

    Don’t think Francois from domaining.com is going to be thrilled with that one

  8. MHB says

    Larry

    Curoius did you try to get just “Larry” or “Lawrence” or “Fischer”?

    I tried michael and Mike but no go

  10. Tony says

    Most popular first names were reserved by facebook employees, partners and VIP before the land grab even started. Also, they didn’t have to comply to the minimum 5 character requirement as the rest of us.

  12. larry fischer says

    sorry mike, just reread. i only tried today as I was unaware. I was only able to get the combination lawrencefischer as larry, lawrence and larryfischer were taken.

  16. owen frager says

    I see a trend of people using Facebook as their personal medium and linked in and Twitter for more commercial purposes. The idea is putting a name with a face so you can find your friends. For example a friend of mine found a buddy from grade school whose Florida-resident parents were going into assisted living just as he was shopping for a vacation home in the exact community they were putting up for sale.

    Guess you can have two pages- but the point is someone looking for mike berkens or larry fisher should be able to find you easily this way because you will always be mike berkens and larry fisher long after domains are 0f interest. In fact your grade school buddies probably have no clue what domaibs are let alone that this is what you call yourself now.

    I know that you can search facebook for the name of a person, so if you use a business alias- make sure that somewhere it maps to your own name for friends who want to reach out.

  17. D says

    Facebook Shmacebook. 5 years from now will be something else. Internet hords historically move from one thing to the other which is popular at given moment.

  18. MHB says

    Owen

    Its easy enough to find someone on Facebook, assuming they don’t have a ridiculous common name like John Smith, in which case it would be great to have facebook.com/johnsmith.

    For myself, Berkens is very rare and usually misspelled, so it made no sense to take my own name as my user name, I think having a short memorable user name, like having a domain is the better strategy.

  19. Tony says

    “because you will always be… long after domains are 0f interest.”

    LOL, facebook will be forgotten long before domains are no longer of interest.

    Domains will be important as long as there is an internet.

    It’s unbelievable how someone who’s been around domainers STILL DOESN’T GET domains or its basic philosophy.

  20. owen frager says

    Well now names are being sold which is illegal (whiuch started with CNNNbrkfor a million last month):
    ust 24 hours after the launch of the facebook vanity URL, we are seeing people starting to sell.

    biggestlooser – $8,000
    rebate – $60,000
    tonightshow – $15,000
    sexvideo – $17,000
    Via http://www.domainerincome.com/news/for-sale-facebook-vanity-names-welcome-to-socialsquatting/:All these names are available at assetize.com, a site for buying and selling accounts including Facebook, Twitter, GMail and WordPress. People seem to be buying accounts; one recent sale for a Twitter account called m*r with 7,851 followers apparently sold for US$1,250.00.

    What a missed opportunity for Facebook and Twitter to charge since they are not profitable and struggling for a revenue model. Ning charges $4.95 a year for me to use domansuccess.com over their product and insert m y own ad codes. This would have meant millions in revenue for FB and Twitter even just at $4-9 base fees like domains that renew annually.

  21. Dominik Mueller says

    Tony, I’ll have to agree with Owen on that one. There is no guarantee that domains will be the best solution to browse the web forever. There are some companies and organizations already that are working on changing the Internet. If the new solutions will be efficient and easier to use, they will be implemented. Although chances of domains becoming obsolete are slim right now, this might change in the future. Technology is changing fast. But I don’t want to take this post off-topic. 🙂

    I got Facebook.com/DominikMueller.

  22. Cole says

    All Facebook does is create a template, and then replicates that across a new directory with the new name…how is that game changing?

    Anyone can do this using Cpanel and a webserver…just maybe not on the same scale…seriously what’s the big deal with this or Facebook for that matter?

    Personally, I think Facebook is stupid and will never have a profile.

    Owning your name as a domain is much better, plus you don’t have to worry about your content being “owned” by Facebook. They flip-flopped on that one, but I don’t trust them, they showed their true colors.

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/17/facebook.terms.service/index.html

    Facebook is a template and “yourcoolname” is a folder on their webserver.

  25. Michael Rhodes says

    “InternetDeveloper”

    I really wanted “WebDesigner” for the SEO, but as I double-checked to make sure I had spelled it correctly, the FB popup told me someone had just taken it…I should have expected that I suppose.

  26. JF Mayer says

    Facebook’s TOS clearly forbid selling usernames, so I expect people who are starting to do that to get in trouble soon.

    Some grabs are hilarious: for instance, I discovered that a guy at a high school in Texas took the username… /terrorism !… Considering that it is impossible to change a username, once he realizes later in life it was not really a good idea, he will need to give it up and recreate a new facebook identity, a new group of friends, etc. Moreover, if one cancels an account, it seems that such names won’t be released, and thus will just be gone forever.

  28. Art says

    Was sitting and counting down seconds. Quick move, quick grab. Got what i wanted.

    Keep in mind it comes with . and –
    so if you got a name, you own it with both . and – try it on your name.

    Which makes each face book all more valuable, and if its deleted, it doesnt come back. We will be seeing a lot of face book trading behind the counter.