Facebook Usernames: The Indifference is Deafening

The tepid reaction to Facebook’s upcoming implementation of usernames has been amusing. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve been as big a Facebook addict as nearly anyone, but there is something cynically satisfying about seeing a web power player make a “big announcement,” only to be left tapping the microphone and asking “is this thing on?”

This morning brought a pitch-perfect jibe of a post by Anil Dash, a veteran tech blogger. He goes on just slightly too long, but does nevertheless hit the humorous bullseye. A sampling:

The whole worldA small number of super-geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address.

Since its announcement yesterday, there’s been a lot of excited discussion of the feature, but in a dashes.com exclusive I can exclusively report this exclusive look at the future of the feature…

June 13, 12:01am: Facebook launches Facebook Usernames. The gold rush is on!

June 13, 12:01:45am: The first completely irrational, highly unlikely theory about how Google indexes Facebook Usernames is emitted from the ass-end of the SEO industry. …

June 13, 12:06am: The Facebook username system starts getting overloaded with new registrations, but their tech team clears it up in 20 or 30 minutes, for a total period of slowness of about 35 minutes.

June 13, 12:15am: A first wave of “It’s alive! Go get your name!” posts go up on various technology blogs, noting that the service is running a little bit slow. None of these posts mention that you can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook.

June 13, 12:45am: TechCrunch discovers that one of its writers can’t get his preferred spelling for his name, and notices that registrations in the system are running a bit slow. A Twitter search reveals four other people discussing the same problems, and one person that can’t get to the feature at all. The phrase “The Facebook Username debacle” is first used, and becomes the preferred sobriquet for the feature forevermore. 70% of commenters mention that “Facebook Username” can be abbreviated “FU”, and each thinks he is the first to think of it. …

That’s probably more than I should excerpt, so check out the entire post over on Anil’s blog.

(Hat tip: brookevannatta)