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Facebook will soon be allowing all users to claim a vanity URL pointing to their regular profile page, we’ve heard from a reliable source. The announcement should come sometime later this week. Afterwards, at a certain date and time, the landrush will begin. Users will be able to grab a vanity URL of their choice.

The Landrush rules will prohibit trademark infringement and a lots of words will be blacklisted, such as generic terms. But for the most part, we hear, users will be able to grab a name that they like.

Facebook has been toying with vanity URLs for some time. URLs for user profiles are currently user id numbers - such as facebook.com/profile.php?id=500065899 (that’s me). In March some Facebook pages started rolling out with vanity URLs, although you must have a business relationship with Facebook (or know someone there) to get one. Facebook.com/techcrunch, for example, links to our TechCrunch page.

The reason they need them - vanity URLs have proven to be a powerful tool on MySpace, Twitter and other services. It’s not just that users like them and it makes telling people your profile name easier. People have also long used MySpace URLs as their online identity. Twitter, more recently, has started to become the online identity provider of choice. Even Google is getting in on the vanity URL game. Facebook doesn’t want to give that up.

Facebook has recently polled users to see if they’d pay for a vanity URL. We have no idea if they plan on charging for the landrush at this point.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime start thinking up that perfect Facebook name. I want facebook.com/mike myself. Oh wait, I guess Facebook employees get first pick. So you’re also out of luck if you’re name is Mark.

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Yes, Twitter is down. Yes, again. Yes, they’re looking into it. Yes, this is another Twitter post. But, I come bearing gifts. Spymaster, the somewhat controversial and addictive Twitter-based game obviously doesn’t work nearly as well when Twitter is down. In fact, it doesn’t work at all. The creators have made a fun little Fail Whale graphic of their own, indicating the the game will be down until Twitter comes back up.

“The Directorate can’t assassinate the failwhale,” the message on the site reads. Funny, but this is a serious problem for a growing number of services that are built using Twitter as their backbone. Even FriendFeed looks like a ghost-town right now with no Twitter messages coming in.

Update: And after about an hour of downtime, they’re back.

Update 2: Twitter has blamed the downtime on a “fatal software error.” Despite saying it’s now fixed, the service is down again.

Update 3: It’s kind of up again, sort of, maybe. Might I suggest a list of alternative things to do once again?

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We’re less than a week away from the launch of the supposed next “iPhone killer,” the Palm Pre. The iPhone has miraculously survived a few of these attempts on its life before — it somehow weathered the BlackBerry Storm, and before that, the G1 was going to be the device the did it in. The G1 was compelling because it was the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system. But as a piece of hardware (made by HTC), it sucked. You know it, I know, even Google employees will admit it. And that’s why I was at first less than thrilled when I heard Google would be giving away Android phones to everyone at the Google I/O event a few days ago. But it turns out, they weren’t giving away G1s, but rather that device’s successor, which they call the “Google Ion,” though some know it better as the HTC Magic, or even as the “G2.” And it was a brilliant move by Google, because this device is leaps and bounds better than the G1.

Mostly setting aside the software itself — the Ion runs the new “Cupcake” variety of Android, aka Android 1.5 — the hardware that HTC has built this time around is much, much better. First of all, the thing just looks a lot nicer. It’s fairly sleek, almost iPhone-like, compared to the G1, which looked like a dull black plastic brick with a protruding chin at the bottom. The Ion is smaller, it’s thinner, the camera is nicer, the buttons are nicer, hell, even that stupid trackball that HTC insists on including is nicer. Most importantly though, it’s much more usable as a device. And we can thank one thing for that, as well as for much of its much improved design: The removal of the physical keyboard.

Now, before all your business and power users jump on me, let me say this: I understand how much you love your physical keyboards on your phones. I admit that most BlackBerry’s have quite nice keyboards. That said, the G1’s absolutely sucked and physical keyboards overall will become extinct over the course of the next several years. While the Ion’s vast improvement over the G1 may not solely prove that, it goes a lot way towards making the case that I’ve been making for a long time now: The physical keyboard is just a waste of valuable space.

With the G1, not only did the keyboard make the device much thicker than it needed to be otherwise, the overall implementation was poor. The device’s chin made for an uneven typing experience, and the fact that the device had to be held in horizontal mode to use the keyboard was just silly beyond belief. And it actually caused some programs to fail when you would close the keyboard with device in typing mode and move it back to vertical mode. With the on-screen keyboard built into Android 1.5, you can now type while the device is vertical. And if you want to type horizontally, you just turn your device and you can do that too. This alone makes the device much better.

The on-screen keyboard itself is better than they G1’s physical keyboard too. I find that I can type much faster with it, and not having to turn the device to the side, makes it easier to do things like type and walk. One major complaint against these virtual keyboards is that you can’t orient your hands without looking down as you’re typing, but improvements in technology such as haptic feedback will help this. Another is that the virtual keyboards often have lag between hitting a key and it showing up on screen — faster devices, like the Ion, will fix this. The physical keyboard is dead — it’s only a matter of time.

All that said, the Ion’s on-screen keyboard is not as good as the iPhone’s. The Ion’s slightly smaller screen means the buttons are slightly more crammed together, which makes mistypes more common. But other Android devices with larger screens will undoubtedly help this.

Beyond the keyboard and the overall design, the other single biggest improvement in the Ion is in battery life. The G1’s battery life was an absolute joke with applications running the background. The Ion’s battery life is quite good — we hear it’s as much as four times as powerful, though I haven’t tested that extensively — so good that I can have background applications such as IM, current weather and Twitter notifications running all day without the device dying on me. Running just two of those apps on the G1 would result in power drain in just a few hours.

But the big question everyone wants to know is: Is the Ion better than the iPhone? No, it’s not.

Even all that I said above doesn’t do justice for how much better the Ion is than that G1, but it’s simply still not on par with the iPhone. While obviously, a lot of that has to do with which software you favor, the iPhone’s OS versus Android, the iPhone hardware is still nicer as well. The screen is slightly bigger, the one-button layout (or 4 if you count the side and top buttons) is simpler, and the thing just feels more sturdy. That said, the Ion has a big advantage in its camera, which is much nicer than the current iPhone’s — but that should change with the new iPhone hardware due shortly.

But I think that it’s fine that the Ion isn’t an “iPhone killer.” First of all, the mobile space is still evolving and growing rapidly, the idea that any one phone is going to kill any other phone is kind of silly — people have different tastes/desires and the market is big enough for a huge number of these types of devices.

Second, the Ion is really a nice phone — it’s easily the second best phone I’ve used behind only the iPhone, and if you want to do something like run background applications, I’d definitely recommend it (at least until Apple gets into that game). And the Ion is a better device if you care deeply about using Gmail, Google Calendar and Gtalk, as those are all obviously Google products built right into Android.

Third, the Ion is just one more of many Android devices due shortly. Google is on record as saying there will be 18 Android phones just this year, but we hear it may even be more than that, north of 25. Google’s goal isn’t creating an “iPhone killer,” it’s creating a vibrant mobile ecosystem that it can use to get more people using Google’s services. Plenty of people use Google on the iPhone, and you can be sure that the company is quite pleased with that.

As a platform, Android needs better applications if it’s going to compete (compete, not kill) with the iPhone in the consumer space. But with so many devices coming, developers are sure to pick up their game as demand increases. A major setback in Android development since the launch of the G1 was that the G1 was a junky piece of hardware. Devices of a higher caliber, like the Ion, will help change everyone’s (both consumers’ and as a result, developers’) mind about moving to the Android platform.

See how easy that was HTC? All you had to do was kill that awful physical keyboard. Nice work.

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Bad news for Portland-based Open-ID startup Vidoop (as well as Vidoop partners like AOL, MySpace and Flock): it’s apparently out of business. Earlier this month the company announced layoffs, but based on an email string that was forwarded to us, the company is now “officially out of business” and winding down.

From CEO Joel Norvell to Vidoop insiders, where he says that the company has no funds to pay wages or other liabilities, and that employees are being offered computers in lieu of wages:

Vidoopsters:

I am currently working with our counsel on next steps, but here is
what I know:

Vidoop LLC is officially out of business. Unfortunately, there are no
funds to pay the unpaid wages or other liabilities. I don’t yet know
if this means there will be a bankruptcy filing. However, we are in
the process of winding down and vacating the office.

Tomorrow and Friday we will be offering certain equipment such as
laptops and desktop computers to employees in lieu of a certain amount
of wages owed. As an example, a laptop might be worth $1000 in back
wages. You would only need to pay taxes on the actual book value of
the asset, which might be $250. So you would write a check for $0.153
on $250, or $38.25. The company’s liability to you would be reduced by
$1000, and you would have a laptop for $38.25.

The investors who walked out of the May 5 deal created a situation
that made an orderly shutdown impossible. However, several of us have
worked nonstop to preserve everyone’s stake in Vidoop, and efforts are
ongoing. We hope to provide details soon.

Thanks to everyone who is volunteering their time to help shut down
the office. There is simply no roadmap for a situation like this, and
I know it is frustrating. Your support during this difficult period
is very much appreciated.

Joel

It’s not clear how long the Vidoop service will remain active. The company promised “plenty of warning” of a shutdown of MyVidoop on May 14, but since then have been silent. There’s a ton of speculation in the email string (we aren’t posting most of it), but we’ll wait for an official company announcement. There’s also likely an interesting backstory around that “investors who walked out of the May 5 deal” statement.

We’ve put Vidoop in the deadpool.

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Life is not easy for search engine startups. FIrst, it’s hard to create something that doesn’t fall flat against Google. Too much hype (Google Killer!), whether the company drives it or not, inevitably leads to disappointment.

Cuil is walking dead, for example, and Wikia Search is just dead. Other ambitious projects like SearchMe are dealing with tepid user enthusiasm, and Wolfram Alpha’s over-hype has cost it credibility.

Any search engine startup with a shred of common sense wouldn’t want to create a lot of hype about itself before launching. There are too many dead bodies lying around to prove how badly that strategy works.

But on the other hand: ambitious startups need to hire talented engineers, and they need lots of money. Crawling and indexing the web is expensive and requires thousands of servers. Those servers aren’t free. So there needs to be at least a little awareness of the startup out there for hiring and fundraising purposes.

New search engine startup Blekko has been trying to figure out exactly where pre-launch press should begin and end. They’ve said very little up to now and haven’t made any big promises at all. We first covered them in early 2008, and have subsequently noted some high profile investors that have put money into the project.

But that’s it. The company has said clearly that they don’t want press, and most bloggers and other journalists have respected that. Not only that, all their website has on it is a cute paper bag puppet. No ridiculous promises of anything at all. We had to beg them just to get a logo (the puppet looked absurd as their logo in CrunchBase).

So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others.

Is Blekko a Google killer? I don’t think so. And the company isn’t claiming that, either. But I do think they have a really cool search product that a lot of people are going to love. I look forward to writing about it when they prepare to launch.

But until then we’re going to give them the privacy they’ve requested to fully bake the product. Because the last thing we need is another over-hyped pre-launch search engine that’s called a failure just because they aren’t a Google slayer a week after launch.

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And you thought the South Carolina v. Craigslist story was dead.

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it’s being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice’s BackPage.com.

That’s all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled “Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.”

In an email, Village Voice’s PR firm accuses Buckmaster of “leveraging the legal bind he’s in to damage Craigslist’s competition.”

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn’t make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they’re proud of it: “We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings,” they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ — Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can’t sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later “submarine” edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

“Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist’s (relatively tame) ‘adult service’ section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) ‘adult service’ section of their own?”

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We’ve put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We’re fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don’t endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren’t going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn’t viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it’s all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York’s Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM’s products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

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