Business | Technology
5.75 million users grab personalised web address on Facebook in two days
Facebook, the most-popular social networking site, said 5.75 million people registered user names in the two days after the company let members claim a personalised internet address.
- Bloomberg
- Published: 23:05 June 19, 2009
- Facebook, owner of the world's largest social networking site, faced a rush of users to register internet addresses under their name after it introduced the offer on June 13.
- Image Credit: Bloomberg News
San Francisco: Facebook, the most-popular social networking site, said 5.75 million people registered user names in the two days after the company let members claim a personalised internet address.
Facebook, which has more than 200 million users worldwide, began accepting registrations at midnight on June 13, on a first-come, first-served basis. Within 15 minutes, more than 500,000 user names had been assigned, said Larry Yu, a spokesman for the Palo Alto, California-based company. More than three million registered in the first 12 hours, he said.
"It's rewarding to see so many people are interested in getting a user name," Yu said. While traffic to the site was higher than usual, the feature's introduction went smoothly, he said.
Facebook said personalised addresses will make it easier to find people. Users can direct friends to a simplified web address, such as http://www.facebook.com/username. Previously, those addresses had strings of letters and numbers. The change also makes it easier to find Facebook members through search engines such as Google.
Separately, Facebook hired Greg Badros from Google to head engineering, Yu said. Badros, Google's senior director of engineering, was responsible from 2004 to 2007 for the technology behind the company's AdSense platform, which lets third-party sites show ads sold by Google, according to Badros's website.
"Greg is one of the most accomplished engineering talents at Google, and it's wonderful that he has decided to bring these talents to Facebook," Yu said.
"We wish Greg well," said Matt Furman, a Google spokesman, said.
Facebook, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, is looking for ways to attract users and encourage them to spend more time on the site. The company generates sales by selling advertising. Revenue may climb 70 per cent this year, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in April.
"Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the web," the company said in a blog posting last week.
"We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook user name in the future."
Users concerned about privacy can specify who can see their profile and what material they can view, Facebook said. They can also specify whether profiles are viewable to people searching outside Facebook.
Facebook attracted 67.5 million visitors in the US in April, with people spending an average of about 169 minutes at the site, according to ComScore, a research firm in Reston, Virginia. That compares with 172 minutes at Google, 290 minutes at Yahoo! and 233 minutes at News Corp's MySpace, ComScore said.
Facebook, whose backers include Microsoft and venture-capital firm Accel Partners, received a $200 million (Dh734 million) investment last month from Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies, valuing the company at $10 billion (Dh36.7 billion).
Share this article
More from Technology
More from Business
Popular in Business
-
XPRESS
Way to go this DSF
A fun-filled route to guide you to all the happening dos in town
Business Editor's choice
-
Travel insurance offers peace of holiday mind
The wisest thing to do is to take out travel insurance before you leave.
-
Controlling risk through managed account
Can be simple stand-alone master funds or can grow to include several special purpose vehicles
-
Regional banking in throes of light and darkness
Loan-loss provision growing but lenders withstanding crisis
