Facebook has made 2 very smart moves in the last 3 weeks.

1. Opening up to OpenID, which gives Facebook access to Google/GMail users
2. Introduction of “vanity” URLs (custom user names), which helps to lock in the vast numbers of casual web users for whom Facebook is ther dominant channel.

Facebook inherits a short term data processing headache – how to harvest and sort all those new GMail account users, but it´s made itself that much more indispensible as curator of your digital identity.