Instead of giving Vanity URLs away for free, like it did last weekend, Facebook originally planned to auction them off to the highest bidder.
Facebook’s first idea was to auction them off in a standard “ascending” auction, where the URL and user name would have gone to highest bidder at the highest bid. The problem there was Facebook would have had to close millions of real-time auctions in a very short period of time, creating a tremendous load on its servers. Facebook also worried about giving wealthier users advantages over poorer ones.
