In a recent article by TechCrunch, Michael Arrington discusses the rising importance of vanity URLs at the major social media network websites. To date, Facebook has not made vanity URLs available to their entire member base, only to key celebrities type users rumored to have over 5,000 or more fans. If you are connected or popular enough, Facebook has begun to issue vanity URLs to specific bands, brands or individuals such as Kevin Rose the founder of Digg - http://facebook.com/kevinrose.

Social marketing experts know the value of snagging their unique brand as a vanity URL at the top sites. It is similar to registering a top .com URL back in the early days of the growth of the web. Establishing your brand at all the top sites with a vanity URL makes it easy for others to find you and follow you, and in the marketing world, it is now known that social networking and a large number of followers can dramatically effect the bottom line.

Vanity URLs are unique. Like domains, there is only one available. Being able to identify a username that is unique and available at most of the top sites is why we developed namechk.com. It makes it easy to check dozens of sites to see what username is still available and gives our users a single reference point to use over and over as they register their username at each site.