Facebook Vanity URLs Coming Saturday

UPDATE: An "on your mark, get set" announcement has been posted on the official Facebook Blog.  According to designer Blaise DiPersia, it’ll be time to "go" at 12:01 AM (EDT) this Saturday, the 13th.  DiPersia also provided the following screenshots if you’re curious about what the setup screen and end result should look like.

Original article: Generally speaking, it’s much easier to remember the name of a person or business than a random, nine- or ten-digit string of numbers.  Everyone from teenage girls to career-oriented professionals should be happy to hear, then, that Facebook is supposed to make vanity URLs available in the near future. 

Thanks to this development, users should be able to register URLs like Facebook.com/YourNameHere.  These addresses promise be the sorts of things folks can tell each other at parties or even print on business cards.

But the trick may be claiming Facebook.com/YourNameHere as opposed to Facebook.com/YourNameYourFavoriteColorYourFavoriteNumberHere.  According to Michael Arrington, an announcement about the vanity URLs "should come sometime later this week.  Afterwards, at a certain date and time, the landrush will begin."

Also, don’t plan on being able to register generic words like "food" or the name of a company like Ford.

So keep your eyes and ears open for further details.  The John Smiths of the world may want to stay especially sharp.

On a side note, any landrush should act as an interesting test of Facebook’s infrastructure.  If the site stays up even while a huge percentage of users are playing with it at once, this’ll prove that the technical side of things is in pretty good shape.