Everyone have probably noticed that Facebook looks different today. It all began when Facebook began accepting registrations at midnight New York time on June 13. Facebook debuted usernames for companies, individuals and groups, in order to finally enable everyone to grab an easy-to-remember, easy-to-share URL for profile or page on a first-come, first-served basis. Within 15 minutes, more than 500,000 user names were assigned.
The new service, which went live at 5am BST on Saturday morning, allows account holders to register more distinctive URLs for their profiles by choosing a specific username, which will then be displayed in the URL link to their profile.
People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.
According to Facebook Inc., more than 3 million people registered user names in the first 12 hours after the social-networking site offered members the chance to claim a personalized Internet address.
Facebook, the most-popular social-networking site, introduces the new feature which is designed to make it easier to find people. Users that have claimed their names can direct friends to a simplified Web address, such as http://www.facebook.com/username. Previously, those addresses had strings of letters and numbers, making them difficult to remember. The change also makes it easier to find Facebook members through search engines such as Google Inc.
According to different reports, within seven minutes of the service being available, 345,000 users grabbed one and within 15 minutes, over a half million had, Facebook usernames.
