SiliconBeat

There I sat, Friday night, at 9 p.m. My laptop open. Browser set to facebook.com/username. Just waiting. But it didn’t help. 

I didn’t get my Facebook vanity URL. Perhaphs the odds were stacked against me. Having a name like Chris O’Brien was just a bit too common. There were five other guys named Chris on my freshman hall at college. Put that together with O’Brien, and well, there are just too many of me. 

Still, I tried to be optimistic. But as soon as I tried to grab facebook.com/chrisobrien, it was gone. Instead, I was offered lame-o substitutes like chrisobrien1, or some such thing. And now there was a whole new round of pressure:

I hadn’t thought to come up with a back up! Now I needed one on the fly. If I waited to think about it, more good choices might disappear. So, I decided to go with chrisobrien68: My name and birth year. Probably meaningless to everyone but me. Hardly a grand branding statement. But there it is. My Facebook URL FOREVER! 

http://www.facebook.com/chrisobrien68

Eventually, I’m sure that none of this will matter. Perhaps the most depressing thing about the whole episode was how truly bummed out I was.