A post by TechCrunch highlighted the possibility of having vanity URLs on Facebook in the future.

Vanity URLs, in short, are the customised URLs of your page/blog on another community platform, like Facebook. They point directly to your page and dont conform to the hosts generated path i.e. www.facebook.com/[your businessname] instead of the path assigned by Facebook.

Though Facebook is allowing vanity URLs they have been limited to either bands, the super famous or business partners.

“Unfortunately we are not currently able to approve requests for vanity URLs (web addresses). The only Pages that presently have vanity URLs are bands and businesses that partnered with us for the initial launch of this new product. We hope to make these URLs available for everyone to have on their individual Page(s) in the future. When this feature is available, we will provide instructions on how to obtain a vanity URL on this help page.”

 I hope to see this come about sooner rather than later. It will be great for business to “customise” their current pages as well as taking your Facebook page offline onto business cards, letterheads and other offline branded material.

Is it really that important? Consider having, for example, http://www.facebook.com/formfunction, it is compact therefore brandable as well as clear and understandable. Compare it to the actual link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/home.php?filter=pp. A lot less distinct. Vanity URLs also give ownership to the brand page. So to answer the question – yes, I think it is important, especially for your business and its online presence.

Besides, after the latest Facebook upgrade why isn’t it there? Twitter has it, Myspace has it and LinkedIn has it.

Lets hope Facebook plays catch-up and gives business the opportunity to stand loud and proud (and branded).