First off:
Vanity-

• amour propre: feelings of excessive pride
• the quality of being valueless or futile; "he rejected the vanities of the world"
• conceit: the trait of being unduly vain and conceited; false pride
  (As defined by Princeton's WordNet)

Now to me, the quality of my Facebook experiance has been steadily decreasing for a long while.  A few months back, it was the frequent changes of the main interface layout.  Before that, it was the messy storm of constant application invitations.  Now, it's those "what is your true ____" quizzes that are all different applications so you can't block them all at once.  There's only a handfull of people left on Facebook that I actually have any quality interactions with on Facebook.  And I'm not the only one who has noticed this steady decline.  Twitter is constantly growing, and people are starting to look for the "new Facebook."

So is it by strange conincidence that Facebook decides after years of holding out, to suddenly let users make vanity URLs in a rat-race at midnight?  This, to me at least, seems like an effort to create an artificial buzz around Facebook.  Granted, the new  URL system does make names more Google search friendly (IF you beat all the other people with your name to the punch).  And Facebook can only do so much to improve it's services while the ultimate factor of whether it's used as a communication tool or as a tool to spread quizzes and apps like a bad rash is determained by it's users.  But all the same, the switch over to vanity URLs is a sign to me that Facebook is feeling a little under the weather, and possibly feeling a little threatened by that up-and-coming little blue bird.

Do you think Facebook's vanity URL changeover is a sincere improvement, or a sign of decline and an attempt to create buzz?  And how much does the quality of Facebook depend on how people use it as opposed to FB making constant improvements?