Before the big Facebook vanity name gold rush, a hilarious post by Anil Dash came out that I shared on Twitter and Facebook.  And while I got some great laughs, I saw a lot of truth to it.

Then Chris Brogan wrote a post about how he claimed a name different from his own.  Some argue he did this not to make a point, but because someone had already taken his Facebook url before he could get to it.  Fair enough, but it still begs a lot of questions.  If you've got an existing brand, is having your Facebook url the end all, be all?

Here's the comment I left on Chris Brogan's post about the subject:

Chris, I kind of agree with you on this.

I was thinking at 11pm on Friday night how tired I was and that I SHOULD be staying up to get my Facebook profile name.

First, I'll say I'd be going for JessicaKnows instead of JessicaSmith because someone took that latter url a long time ago, and I consider JessicaKnows more what people identify with.

Which got me thinking...if someone Googles me by inputting "Jessica Smith" they're going to get the girl from Laguna Beach that got a DUI, the girl from Survivor who also goes by Flicka, and a few other people that happen to have the same name, doing pretty cool things, but who aren't me.

So, if someone HAD gotten my vanity url of JessicaKnows and people found it, and they decided to do unsavory things with it, it'd be clear to most that it was merely a squatter and not me.

Why?

Because, like a lot of us, my name is part of the fabric of who I am.  People know my name, but what's more important, is that there is a set of traits, feelings, and value that people associate with my name.  And if someone else takes my name and tries to change those, they're going to have a hard time, because those belong to me.

And really it's those traits, feelings a name evokes, and value that makes BRANDING what it is.

I'm debating whether or not I need to race to get 1000 fans for my Fan Page by June 28 to claim that Facebook url.  But I think I'm just going to sit tight.  After all, I already own that Facebook page http://facebook.jessicaknows.com ...so in a way I've already taken ownership of my fan page, the question is, I guess, will it matter if someone tries to take ownership over it too?

I'd like to think my personal brand is stronger than what an impostor would try to do with it.  Most brands I know are multi-dimensional and the substance, and as Amber Naslund and Aaron Brazell said on their panel at BlogPotomac this weekend, "to back it up."

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