It was one of the biggest annoyances when Google+ rolled out: the urls. A url with a big number after all is very hard to recognise and to promote. As a brand you want to point to http://plus.google.com/stateofsearch not https://plus.google.com/b/101475377013754652573/101475377013754652573. But Google didn’t support that.
There are services who cleverly make use of that by providing redirect urls. For example you can reach the State of Search Google+ account through this url: gplus.to/stateofsearch. But now finally Google is rolling out vanity urls for Google+. It might take a while, but in the end you might have the nice looking url you always wanted.
Google+ employee Saurabh Sharma (Plus number 109179785755319022525) announced on hi G+ page that Google is rolling out the vanity urls for specific brands now and for general usernames in the future.
Celebrities and big brands
The first ones getting the vanity urls are not the ‘average Joes on the street’ (would make a nice change if they would put them first) but celebrities and big brands. For example David Beckham (google.com/+davidbeckham) and Britney Spears (+Britney Spears) and for brands Hugo Boss (google.com/+hugoboss) and Toyota (google.com/+toyota).
It is probably going to take a while before we all have a vanity url and Google hasn’t revealed how they are going to handle duplicate names, but its a start. It took a while though…