If you want your own Facebook Username you must act right away

Right now if you want to send someone to your profile, you have to figure out a URL that looks something like this:

www.facebook.com/people/Your-Name/585946540
(That's an inactive URL, BTW, so don't click it.)

But wouldn't you rather own www.facebook.com/yourname?

And this becomes even MORE important for Facebook Fan Pages (not your regular friend profiles, the pages you can set up to promote your business.) Can you imagine how devastating it would be to have someone else own your company name in Facebook?

In the past, it was easy to own your own name on Facebook, all you had to do was to spend a large amount with Facebook (think $50,000+ per month) or be a huge celebrity, and it was yours.

Facebook Usernames are LIVE:

Go to http://www.facebook.com/username to claim your personal username

I secured mine www.facebook.com/OPUSalbums - I was not able to get DanielRoberts , Daniel.Roberts or even DanielJRoberts .

According to @mashable, 500,000 usernames were reserved on Facebook in first 15 minutes.

@ChrisBrogan lost his username to another Chris Brogan http://www.facebook.com/chrisbrogan

Here're the rules, courtesy of the Facebook blog:

Usernames must be at least 5 characters long
Usernames must be alphanumeric (a-z, 0-9) with the only exception being a period
Usernames are permanent and non-transferable
No obscenities allowed
In order to prevent abuse, any new user profiles (created after 3 pm ET on June 9) won't be immediately eligible (they'll have to wait until June 28th)
Rule #3 is important because it prevents people from snapping up usernames and then trying to sell them.