There’s been a flurry of news and activity on the net about Facebook and URLs, but in case you’ve missed it or think you’ve missed the boat, read on.

Facebook announced recently the option of registering a unique URL for your account. This gives you a unique and readable URL for your Facebook profile page, like this:

http://www.facebook.com/drrichard

…which is much nicer than the old version.

If you are already a Facebook user, you can register yours now. You’ll need to be quick though, since millions of usernames have been claimed already.

If you’re not already a Facebook user (or a group with less than 1000 fans), you’ll have to wait until June 28th. Facebook is using this window to try to reduce spammy-type grabbing of usernames – called username squatting.

OK. Back to business – how does this help you with your website? Is it worth doing?

Well, the current URLs for profiles aren’t very friendly, easy to remember, simple to pass on or very ‘brandable’. If you’re concerned about any of these, it’s worth seeing if you’re name is still available.

If you plan to try on the 28th, make sure you start early!

• Your car dealer says she will call you back at the weekend. She doesn’t.
• You promise to get back to a prospect on Tuesday. You leave it til Thursday
• The spam email promises a discount on your favorite drugs but when you open it it’s just garbage
• Your latest blog comment promises useful feedback but it turns out to be just a bunch of link spam

Are you getting wound up? It’s probably because this seems very familiar. Promises get broken every day.

It’s the promises that people keep that you remember. If you break your promises people will forget you. Very quickly. Don’t forget that a promise could be a number of things:

• A Google AdWords Ad for your website
• A Google hit returned for a keyword from one of your pages
• Your book cover
• Your URL
• Your autoresponder delivery schedule

These all promise something to the visitors who clicks on your ad, or opens your book, or types in your URL, etc.

The words in an AdWords ad promise to show something relevant when your visitors arrive at your site. Your URL (include any file/pathnames here) promises some content related to the words that it includes.

If you promise to do something via any of these paths and then don’t do it, you will disappoint your customers and they may not come back.

No one likes a broken promise.