A vanity URL is a URL

Uniform Resource Locator

In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....

 or domain name

Domain name

A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

, created to point to something to which it is related and indicated in the name of the URL, very similar to a Personalized URL. In many cases this is done by a company to point to a specific product or advertising campaign

Advertising campaign

An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...

 microsite

Microsite

A microsite is an Internet web design term referring to an individual web page or a small cluster of pages which are meant to function as a discreet entity within an existing website or to complement an offline activity...

. In theory, vanity URLs are creatively linked to something making them easier to remember than a more random link.

In social media

Social networking sites like Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

, and Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 offer vanity URLs to their users where their username is in the URL.

For example, facebook.com/wikipedia would bring you to the Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

 fan page on Facebook.

Use of top-level domains in vanity URLs

A top-level domain

Top-level domain

A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...

 can become part of a vanity URL. Taking advantage of countries that do not ask for proof of residence to register their country-specific TLDs

Country code top-level domain

A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, a sovereign state, or a dependent territory....

can allow a user to incorporate the two or three letters following the dot, using them to help spell out the desired name, word or phrase.

For example, someone named Jane Smith might register a site on the .th domain to spell www.janesmi.th