14 DAY TRIAL // With all the hype surrounding the Facebook Vanity URLs it was only a matter of time before some companies tried to get a bit of exposure from it too. One of them is SocialToo, which gives users their own custom URL as well as some stats from their Facebook profile, but while the timing may be planned the product has some useful features.
"We're extending our existing Facebook profile redirect URLs, which redirect yourusername.socialtoo.com to your Facebook profile, and adding an additional layer of analytics to the whole process. So tonight, you'll be able to get a Facebook vanity URL and get the SEO benefits, but the URL you'll want to hand out to all your friends will be your SocialToo vanity URL because we'll provide statistics around those clicking on the URL, the browsers they're using, where they're located, and where they're clicking from," said the company in a statement.
The service was previously available to Twitter users but now SocialToo is expanding it to aid Facebook users who want to keep track of who and how many people are visiting their profiles. The system works by providing users with a Vanity URL – this time at SocialToo – that will be something like username.socialtoo.com and which will be the one they pass around and share with their friends. The link will redirect to their Facebook profile but the nice part comes from the fact that those using the link are tracked and the statistics will be available to users trough a sleek interface at socialtoo.com.
For now only some statistics are available, like how many visitors came in one day, the regions they came from and the browser they are using, but SocialToo plans to add more features and also expand the service to other social networking platforms.
“Expect broken down referer and location/IP information. Expect the ability to tell what Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed users are sharing your links. Expect the ability to also have a short URL for your Twitter profile, your LinkedIn profile, your FriendFeed profile, and many other networks, all providing detailed analytics around who is visiting those URLs,” SocialToo's Jesse Stay wrote in the blog post announcing the features.