It’s official, Facebook just enabled users to set a permanent username. Until now URSs (Uniform Resource Locators) were just a series of random numbers and letters. Now users can have a custom URL. Here is the information from Facebook:

Starting at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009, you will be able to select a username. You can personalize your Facebook URL (web address) by selecting a unique username. It will appear in the location bar of your browser after “http://www.facebook.com/” when you view your profile.

Do it now!

Here is the link to set yours now: http://www.facebook.com/username/. If you have a common name yours may already be taken, so seriously, do it now! (It takes all of 15 seconds)

A couple of Hints:

If you use Twitter to automatically update your to Facebook status consider using the same username.

Think long-term as the username is permanent. A joke today might not be as funny tomorrow.

Reality

Let’s face it, we have no idea where social networking is going, but clearly LinkedIn (professional) and Facebook (personal) are two of the leading platforms at least for the next couple of years. So taking a moment to make certain you can be easy to find in the future (if you decide you want to be) never hurts.