Here is how you can claim the Facebook username you want and not get disappointed. Remember, this evening there will a rush to this site to claim vanity urls, so it’s best to have a contingency plan in place if your preferred name is not available.

1. Bandwidth – close all web applications you don’t needs, such as Limewire and Mininova. This is not the time to be fighting for bandwidth.

2. Login to Facebook – Don’t waste time logging into Facebook when it goes live. Do it now.

3. Facebook Registration page – open a tab in your browser for registering Facebook Vanity.

http://www.facebook.com/username/

4. Open Notepad – type in the 5 Facebook usernames you want to register. Again, we are assuming that the first will not be available, so you have your backups ready. Don’t use Word as cutting and pasting into Facebook may cause unseen characters (like white spaces) to enter the registrations forms and ruin things for you.

5. Example of Facebook vanity username variations

I’ll try to get Ivan Walsh but if that’s not available here are the variations I will try to get.

1st option – IvanJWalsh – James is my third middle name

2nd option – IvanWalshMD – as I want people to know that I’m a qualified doctor

You could change this to any industry qualification, such as CBA or MS.

3rd option – IvanWalshBlogger – if I want people to know that I’m a professional blogger.

You could change this to any career or business role.

4th option – IvanWalshDirector – if I want people to know that I’m the director of an organization. You could change this to any other job title.

5th option – IvanWalshPHD – if I want people to know that I’m a qualified PHD or other academic qualification.

6. Mistake – IvanAWalsh – this would be a mistake as Ivana is a female name. Anthony is my middle name for this would just lead to confusion.

7. Test it – log out of Facebook and see if the Facebook vanity url you registered actually works!

If not, try again.

I think Facebook will crash tonight, maybe a few times, so be patient and keep trying.

Best of luck

Ivan

PS:  Usernames much be in basic text, at least 5 characters long, and include only alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (”.”). TechCrunch

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