A lot of Facebook executives and employees are probably wearing big, satisfied smiles this morning. As statistics continue to trickle in, it looks like the vanity URL offering that the company held over the weekend was a huge success.
Saturday morning, Facebook representatives reported that 200,000 usernames were registered in the first 3 minutes of the midnight land rush. Also according to Facebook, over 500,000 went in the first half-hour, and a whopping 3 million got claimed during a span of about 12 hours.
Now, Hitwise’s Robin Goad has chipped in, writing, “Facebook experienced its busiest ever day in the UK yesterday (June 14th), following the launch of its new personalized username capability. The social network was the second busiest website in the UK (after Google UK) on Sunday, picking up 1 in every 19 UK Internet visits (5.17%). Traffic to the site was up 9.5% on the previous Sunday (June 7th).”
And all of this seemed to occur without a single hiccup or slowdown, never mind a full-on crash.
As for what’s next, the Facebook team will likely spend a little while trying to catch up on lost sleep. But Om Malik writes, “A friend of mine today speculated that it is only a matter of time before Facebook starts offering an @replies service. I totally agree, and it would be the most obvious thing for Facebook to do. Just like you can point a comment to me by typing @om on Twitter, it is a safe bet you’ll be able to do the same on Facebook.”
