Facebook User Names

Ok, I know that no one who reads this is going to be interested, but I feel that I ought to spend sometime talking about the newest addition to the Facebook social network.

To begin with--

Facebook is making a small change to it's web system (this is the layman's explanation for the people who have know idea what I'm talking about).
You see, currently on Facebook, one's user name is not identity specific. Lets say that my user name is "Joe Schmoe". Well there can be a thousand "Joe Schmoe"s in the world and they can all have a facebook account with that same name on it. Facebook made their system that way by adding a 9-digit ID number in the URL of a users Facebook account.
The reason they did things this way was to basically stop people from having to come up with absurd and childish user names like "XxSexyChiquitaManxX". It worked. People really appreciate being able to use their own names.
It performs 2 functions. First, it almost forces disclosure (makes it hard to appear annonymous). And second, it makes it super easy to find friends, even if you only met them once. As long as you know their name, you can find them.

But now Facebook is adding a function that will give people unique ID names and people are freeeeaking out!
Now, the reason that they're freaking out is...I'm not even sure...Too silly for me to even speculate about. I guess it probably has a lot to do with people misunderstanding what is going on and, therefore, thinking that they're going to lose their original user name and that Facebook is suddenly going to be populated with "XxSexyChiquitaManxX"s again.

This assumption is mostly wrong.

The purpose of adding these unique identifiers is twofold.
The first of which: Ones personal URL currently looks something like this "http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=883269526&ref=profile"
Not very easy to figure out, obviously. But soon it will look more like this "http://www.facebook.com/home/XxSexyChiquitaManxX.php" Much simpler. It will be much easier to view other users straight from the URL. It's more of a courtesy.
Not to mention that they're actually a little behind on adding this function.
MySpace, the largest Social Network in the world, has sported this function for years and years and Twitter, the new big trend amongst the geekiest of us all (and Aston Kutcher...), has sported the same function since it's inception.
As far as I'm concerned-- It's about freaking time, Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook).

The next purpose of adding unique IDs to people's profiles is that the ID will appear in paretheses under the normal user name.
For example, Ted Turner's Facebook account will look like this.... "Ted Turner (XxSexyChiquitaManxX)".
What this will do for users is, hopefully, add some ease to the searching and identifying of new members to one's social network.
If someone had been searching for Joe Schmoe, the could search him and find a thousand Joe Schmoes. And with people's affinity to put up pictures that do absolutely NOTHING to help identify them, it makes it hard to figure out WHICH Joe Schmoe you were looking for. But now you can see their personal ID and that will (hopefully) contain something that might help identify them, or at the very least, will help users share contact info. i.e. "Hey what was that guy I met last night's name?"--"Ummm, Theodore Turnstyle or something...I think he's XxSexyChiquitaManxX." -- "Ohhh, ok, I'll go stalk him online."

Aside from helping people searching for a NEW friend, it will also help existing friends search for eachother. I may not recall how to spell someone's name or something of that nature, but if they have a decent personal ID then not only will I remember it, but if I'm looking at a profile and I THINK it's theirs, then I can just check the personal ID to see if it matches what I remember.

See ya'll! That was long winded, unnecessary, and pretty silly. But it makes all you people who DONT like the idea look like krazy people! I mean...What is to be LOST from having that identifier? You're not losing your user name. You're not losing that sense of disclosure. And you're not going to end up being friends with a bunch of SexyBananaPeople.
Easy Peasy!

More to come, later!