Founded	2004	2003
Purpose	Social networking	Professional networking
Description	Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.	With more than 45 million users representing 150 industries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find potential clients. Individuals have the ability to create their own professional profile that can be viewed by others in their network, and also view the profiles of their own contacts.
Members	350 million members	53 million members
Alexa Rank Worldwide	2	41
Active Visitors	128,339,156	14,468,718
Annual Growth	+ 159.60%	+86.58%
Functions	Personal profile Job History Education History Friends/Fans Friend categories Photo sharing Internal messaging Status bar Video sharing Link sharing Instant messaging Business pages 3rd party applications Inbound blog feeds Inbound Twitter feeds YouTube integration Private networks Advertising	Personal profile Living resume (cv) Connections Internal messaging Status bar Professional Recommendations Groups management Activity tracking Blog integration Link sharing Jobs database Group discussion Knowledge sharing Member updates
International According to Alexa	29.9% USA 5.1% France 4.8% Italy 4.8% UK 4.1%India	42.8% USA 14.3% India 6.5% UK 3.7% Netherlands 2.8% Germany
Load Time	0.118 seconds	2.516 seconds
Time on Site	33 minutes	6 minutes
Demographics	25-34 years old Female Parents Some college	25-34 years old Female Parents Master’s degree
Tags	social, social networking, community, friends	social-networking, careers, jobs, business

All data and information is based on a snapshot taken 17 Dec 2009

Observations

• Linkedin means business
• But, Facebook has more reach, reputation and traffic
• Linkedin is 57% international while Facebook is 70% international
• People spend half an hour on Facebook but only 5-7 minutes on Linkedin
• Linkedin members tend to be higher educated than Facebook members
• If you are looking for a job, Linkedin has a much more formal jobs database
• But, if jobs come through personal connections then Facebook may be your answer
• Linkedin discussions tend to be somewhat self-promotional, but are more professional
• Facebook has a great advertising venue if you wanted to laser target your messaging
• If you want to reach an international audience, Facebook has the edge

Initially, Facebook only allowed you to create a single personal URL for your username.  Now, if your Facebook fan page for your business is established and has a growing fan base then you can easily create a personal (business) vanity URL for your business Facebook page.  You need to be logged into your Facebook account.

Here is how:

Step 1: Go to http://www.facebook.com/username/

Step 2: Click [Set a username] for your pages

Step 3: Pull down and select the page that you administer

Step 4: Enter a custom, personal URL for that page and click [Check availability]

Step 5: Accept the vanity URL for your business Facebook page and start promoting it

Ours is: http://www.facebook.com/inQbation.  If this tip was helpful, please become a fan and we’ll send you more tips from time to time.

1. You need to be logged into your Facebook account.
2. Go to: http://www.facebook.com/username/
3. Select the page or account from the pulldown menu
4. If you have at least 25 fans on your page, you can set a custom username/URL

WASHINGTON, DC – Forty-five minutes ago, Facebook began allowing those underprivileged people like me to grab their personal URL or vanity URL on Facebook.

Some kid already grabbed www.Facebook.com/BlakeNewman so I had to be a bit creative and settled for Facebook.com/Blake.Newman.Washington.DC.

Here’s how you do it:

Get your vanity Facebook URL – pretty permalink on Facebook

1. Log into your Facebook page
2. Click on the link just below the blue bar that says, “Set your username now.”
3. Select a radio button or click the “More” link on the bottom left
4. Play around with some usernames and check availability
5. When you’re happy with what you’ve got, save it.
6. Once it’s saved, you can’t go back.  So, think about it well.