The Coffee Desk

Facebook Is Getting Username Support

As of a Facebook announcement on both the developer blog and the top of the site for all users, Facebook is getting support for actual usernames in addition to what should be your “real world” name on June 13, 2009.

There are some upsides and downsides to this decision, and there are some things you should consider regarding your privacy when choosing a username as I’ll outline below.

Facebook Benefits

Facebook themselves have several unseen benefits: now, since the site is largely unencrypted by default, email addresses are less likely to be compromised (as they are all of the time) and users don’t have to deal with the issue of several email addresses/one login.

But how this will be implemented remains, as of this writing, to be seen. With Facebook’s history of changing their site on what appears to be a weekly basis anyways, you can’t be certain about any changes, but one has to ask: will “real names” continue to be displayed at the top of pages, or will the new usernames replace them?

It would be great if Facebook were to go to a more username-based rather than email- and real name-based service for more privacy and less “employer”-friendly, which has turned into a problem for some people with “soapbox Facebook accounts” when possible future employers find their account.

Nothing is certain, but there are some things, as a user, that you must consider when picking and using a username:

Privacy

Facebook has a sad history of privacy (as we’ve pointed out here many times), so I wouldn’t trust the new usernames with a real-world firstname_lastname format, since most accounts use one’s real name anyways.

And using a username already heavily associated with your name is also a bad idea in case employers really put you under the microscope: it makes your social life that much easier to find in a regular web search, which you probably don’t want employers to see.

And while most accounts are not publicly viewable, employers’ demands can include the right to view an employee’s private Facebook account, under threat of termination (as most contracts/forms permit in larger, employee-reputation-aware businesses).

It has happened with YouTube users, Myspace users, and bloggers many times before, so don’t let it happen to you (or increase your chances of) now with Facebook usernames.

(and as a side note, did anyone notice Twitter user @facebook_rt getting “suspended for strange activity”? Makes you wonder)