Facebook today announced it is making addresses on its service more consistent. More specifically, this means the postfix of the URL people use to get to your Timeline and the prefix of your Facebook e-mail address will be the same. Facebook will be rolling out these updated addresses over the next few weeks.

Facebook also noted that anyone who already selected an e-mail address will not be affected by this change. As you can see in the screenshot above, Jane smith's Timeline is available at facebook.com/jane.smith.19 and her e-mail address is jane.smith.19@facebook.com.

If you still haven't choosen an address, you can do so over at facebook.com/username. The webpage will also let you choose an address for any Facebook Pages you manage.

My personal vanity URL is facebook.com/emil.protalinski, but I've never bothered setting up a Facebook e-mail address. Those who wish to contact me usually do so via my real e-mail address (if you don't know it, use the ZDNet contact form) while those who try to use Facebook often end up in the other messages folder.

It's a well-known fact that Facebook is looking to kill e-mail with its Messages service. While e-mail certainly has its flaws, the truth of the matter is it's here to stay for quite some time. As great as it is that I can simply type in my friend's name to send him or her something, e-mail is still the de facto method of Internet communication.

Then again, I'm sure many would argue that the younger generation doesn't use e-mail and simply turns to Facebook or Twitter for communication. I would counter this by saying that this is for their personal use, but the second they get hired somewhere, they learn to use e-mail. After all, whenever I need to get a statement from Facebook, I e-mail the company.

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