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Welcome to the beginning of the end of Facebook as we know it. (Although technically they already started down that path when they copied Twitter).
As of 12:01am today, you can now create a username for your Facebook account. Usernames must be 5 characters or longer. Since I happened to be on when the countdown flipped, I figured I would try for a nice, short username. Well, even though no one registered for it, “betsy” was unavailable. Several of my friends tried registering for usernames such as “photographer” and “weddingphotographer” — and those were also mysteriously unavailable.
What a disappointment! I personally don’t see the point in opening up username registration if you’re banning certain words. Another caveat — Facebook is allowing username registration for pages, but ONLY if those pages had 1,000 fans as of May 31st. Seems like a cheap deal to me.
Even though the username feature never was something “needed” for Facebook, it appears to be the direction the developers are heading. Head over to facebook.com/username and make sure to reserve your preferred (or not-so-preferred) username now. Be careful though, because once you choose a username, you cannot change it.
