The Bizarre Brouhaha Over Facebook Usernames

Tonight Facebook is doing something not-so-crazy that you probably shouldn't care about, but I'll tell you anyway. They're allowing users to replace the messy sequence of letters and numbers after the facebook.com with a username, just like Myspace does. No biggie, right? Wrong. Because this is a story that involves 1) The Internet, 2) A change 3) Room for speculation, it follows that somebody had to write a story saying that this not-so-crazy update will make Facebook obsolete and change the face of the Internet as we know it. Thank you, Daily Beast!



Douglas Rushkoff seems like a really smart guy. He's written some great pieces for the Daily Beast, and he seems to know a lot about the Internet. So I'm having trouble understanding why exactly he's so freaked about a URL update destroying Facebook. Seriously, that is what he is saying. I'll allow him to explain in his own words:

Facebook's relative detachment from the Internet is not a bug, but a feature. Its only competitive advantage in the Internet space--its only reason for being--was that it was more personal, more closed off, and arguably more private than the Internet itself. Now that we'll be quickly findable via Google, what's left to distinguish this social-networking site from the social network that is... the Internet?

But we are quickly findable via Google. Look, I just found Douglas Rushkoff's Facebook page on Google. Here's (I believe the same) Douglas Rushkoff's Facebook profile. That wasn't very hard! And Douglas still hasn't quit Facebook even though I, and presumably thousands of other searchers, have theoretically shattered his privacy, and Facebook's "only reason for being" has already been completely abolished.

His conclusions are even weirder:

That shift, I believe, portends the beginning of the end for this social network....A minute after midnight on Saturday may just be the moment 200 million more people find themselves thrown firmly onto the Internet.

The end of the social network! 200 million people adrift in a sea of bandwidth! The horror! I truly don't want to be dense here, but huh? Facebook users don't know that they're on the Internet? What do they think this Facebook thing is, a mind meld? An opium dream? An actual book? I mean, how ridiculous a rationale would one have to make up to defend the statement that changing your URL makes one feel thrust into the open sea of the Internet, and caused you to stop using Facebook? That's an open question. I am at a loss.

But I also don't want to shirk my responsibility to the public, so listen: If you're on Facebook, you must know that it means you are also on the Internet. The Intenet. Yes, that's the one with the Google. Good luck, and happy searching.