Making A Custom Facebook URL For The Rest Us

April 26, 2009 by Jack · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Tutorials 

I never intended this to be a two part post, but I notice that many people have benefited from my previous post on Making A Custom Facebook Profile Address. Unfortunately, it was a method really only suited for those with their own hosting and willing to hack their .htaccess. While it’s pretty simple to do, I realized that not everyone could do it. The good news is that I figured out another way to get a custom Facebook URL that is easy enough for anyone to do.

URL Shortening Services To The Rescue
An easy way to get a more customized Facebook URL is by using URL shortening services like tinyurl.com. Normally, they work by creating a link like http://tinyurl.com/cur6q6 but they can just as easily create a link like http://tinyurl.com/jackwoodsfacebook.

Nitty Gritty Details
How do you do it? Just visit tinyurl.com. On their page, put in the link to your Facebook profile address. If you have any problem finding it, check out the part 1 post and the directions are there. Mine is http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Woods/1022785814. There is a little box below that says “Custom alias (optional):.” That’s where you will put in your custom name. In my case, I tried first jackfacebook and that was already taken so I tried jackwoodsfacebook and it gave me the link http://tinyurl.com/jackwoodsfacebook. Easy, right?

Other URL Shortening Services
You are also not limited to just tinyurl.com. Many of the URL shortening services let you shorten the URL to a custom name or alias. Bit.ly allowed me to shorten my long Facebook url to http://bit.ly/jackwoods.

Pretty cool, huh? Granted it’s better to use a redirect from your own domain, but these URL shortening services do really help you get a better, more customized Facebook address and are an acceptable substitute.

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