In case you missed it, last Saturday at 12:01 AM EST Facebook gave both individuals and fan pages the ability to register their own vanity URLs. The main reason this is awesome is that it allows you to market your Facebook page much more easily. Instead of a long string of letters and numbers, you now have the benefit of something short and tidy. Like facebook.com/mailchimp. During the recent NBA Finals, for example, I noticed brands like Vitamin Water promoting their fan page URLs instead of their main company website in their commercials. And this type of cross promotion is definitely working! Vitamin Water currently boasts over 500,000 Facebook fans.

There are some caveats to note about getting a vanity URL for your fan page right now. Unfortunately, if you have fewer than 1,000 fans you’ll have to wait until June 28, 2009 to secure your vanity URL. In an effort to mitigate copyright issues and naming rights, you will have the opportunity to report that someone is infringing on your intellectual property rights by filling out this form. This may not be entirely helpful if you’re an admin without a registered or trademarked name that you can protect though.

Have you claimed your own small piece of social media realestate yet? Be sure you do– Facebook was reporting that nearly 6,000,000 custom usernames had been claimed as of Monday 6/15. After that, be sure to stop by and connect with MailChimp on Facebook at facebook.com/mailchimp.

One of the most exciting things about our new chimp is the fact that he now has a body– unlike before when he was just a floating head. We thought that this definitely called for a celebratory gesture, and what could be better than a life-size cardboard cutout?

We like to think of ourselves as trend-setters, meaning you’re probably asking yourself where you can procure one of these for your business. We ordered our chimp from Party Standups, a company based out of Bradenton, Florida (near Sarasota). All of their cutouts are made from weatherproof corrugated plastic and can range in size from 1 ft. 4 in. up to as large as 8 ft. The image itself is printed on white 4mil vinyl using 6-color process inks, and then laminated to the corrugated plastic before it’s cut to shape. The ordering process is super simple– just upload your artwork (most standard image formats are accepted, although the company recommends a resolution of at least 100 dpi), choose your desired options (like size), add to your cart and voila! In 5 to 10 business days you should have your very own life size friend.

In typical MailChimp fashion, the folks around here have been thinking of all sorts of creative things to do with our new pal. (No, not those kinds of things.) If you’re in the Atlanta area, he is rumored to be making a guest appearance on Friday, October 3, at the 2008 Webmaster Jam Session. (Bananas may or may not be involved.) The Webmaster Jam Session is a two day event that brings together web designers, developers, marketers and visionaries to learn about the latest ideas and trends in web design, development, search engine optimization and social media. On Friday, MailChimp Co Founder and Email Marketing expert Ben Chestnut will be talking about designing for email. In his own words, “email might suck but it should still look good”. You can also catch Aarron Walter, MailChimp’s user experience designer, in these sessions on topics ranging from web standards to what’s important when building a website.