Update: Verified account signups are now live. Reserve your profile today.
As a holiday treat, Twitter has announced that it will begin allowing Vine users to register for vanity URLs for their profiles. The race begins on Friday, December 20 at 9am PST when those with verified accounts will be able to sign up. All other Vine users will be able to participate on Monday, December 23.
The news was shared in an email Twitter sent to journalists earlier today.
As you may expect, vanity URLs will be in the format “vine.co/USERNAME”. In order to get your username, log into your account on Vine.co and there will be a page that will offer instructions on how to register your profile URL.
Twitter says that it will be automatically reserve profile URLs that “mirror verified Twitter @usernames”. So even though the username is secure, you need to claim the profile by registering for it.
The addition of vanity URLs brings Vine into parity with many other services, such as Instagram, Facebook, Google+, and, of course, Twitter. Although not specified in its correspondence, one thing that users will also receive is a Vine-specific profile page. Currently, when you view someone’s Vine, there’s no option to find previous videos that they’ve done. It would be natural that now you have a custom URL, users will be able to find a catalog of someone’s six second creations.
Here’s the full email about the announcement:
Starting Monday, December 23rd, Vine users will be able to register a vanity URL for their Vine profile (e.g. vine.co/TwitterForNews). Verified Twitter accounts will be able to register profile URLs starting 9 AM PST, Friday, December 20.
Like your Twitter profile, a vanity URL offers the ability to share profile pages easily like you can with a Twitter profile (e.g.twitter.com/TwitterForNews). Vine profile URLs are optional and can only be registered by an existing Vine user.
The Vine team will automatically reserve profile URLs that mirror verified Twitter @usernames. Even though the Vine team will reserve profile usernames, you must still claim the profile URL by registering it.
If you would like a profile URL that is different from the handle of the verified Twitter account (for example, @RealSMG may want vine.co/SarahMichelle), this can be accommodated but you must register the URL, assuming the account is not already a verified account on Twitter. Once a profile URL is taken, it cannot be registered by someone else.
Twitter handles that are not verified will not be automatically reserved for Vine profile URLs. If you have an unverified URL that you would like to reserve, please send a list to journo@twitter.com, and we can help reserve it.
To register, visit vine.co, login with your account, you’ll then be directed to the page below, where you can register your profile URL.
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