Looking at the following facebook page – basically waiting up late tonight so that I can give my facebook page a custom URL.
The username needs to be 5 plus characters, or I’d be in competition with my boss for facebook.com/seth. But the fascinating thing to me, is how the facebook PR team took a plain old feature, one that should have been there from the beginning, and have turned it into an event.
This could have easily been inserted as a feature that just appeared, ready to use, it’s not a huge departure from how people will use facebook. Nobody looks at the url bar after they login, anyway, and everyone goes to their homepage, so it’s not really much of a feature.
Except for the fact that we’re allo meglo-maniacs, who are desperate to be unique, and the Facebook marketing team has done a top-notch job of tapping into this, and making folks scramble to ‘grab’ their facebook name.
- They’ve set up a counter page – (seen above) so you can see how long you’ve got to wait. Delayed gratification, check.
- You can’t grab a name until midnight. If it’s worth waiting up for, it must be good. Anticipation, check.
- Bribery of the press. The oldest trick in the PR book – if you want ink, give a writer something free. Exclusivity, check.
Well done, Facebook. Now lets hope that your IT staff has been as diligent as your marketing folks, because you’re about to get slammed.
