By now you may have heard about the frenzy for grabbing a personalized URL for Facebook. Within 15 minutes of the service being available Friday night, over a half million had Facebook usernames and within 12 hours the number grew to 3 million.
I did go and grab my own URL today (and you can get yours here: http://facebook.com/usersnames). With a name like mine, I wasn't terribly worried that it wouldn't be available. However Facebook "usernames" aren't just for users. They are also available for Pages as well, but as I discovered there are some restrictions.
After doing a little digging, here's what I discovered in the FAQ:
Q: I tried to secure a name for my Page but Facebook said the Page was not eligible. What are the requirements?
A: Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must have been live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have had a minimum 1,000 fans at that time.
This limitation is temporary. All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.
You can also read it yourself here:
http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900
Since my Pages don't have 1,000 fans, it appears that I'll need to wait until June 28th. Given the initial goldrush that may be a date that I'll want to save in my calendar.