I changed my URL to:

http://www.facebook.com/dave.park1

I tried for /davepark and /dave.park but those were already taken. Bah.

Imagine the odds: No sooner did Facebook swing open the doors to its fire sale of vanity URLs than a geeky frat party ensued, as members reserved prankish, clever and lewd names instead of maybe the digital alias their friends (and mothers) might have hoped for.

Mashable reports that 500,000 people got processed within 15 minutes of launch, which is impressive service, especially since there are virtually no reports of anything going wrong technically. I got what I was after — facebook.com/johncabell — but as I wrote in a previous post it was really just about housekeeping since I own my own domain and use subdomains, like facebook.johnabell.com, as my calling cards.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/facebook-url-madness-i-got-mine-but-so-did-haywood-jablome/

 

Also, some friendships are being ruined....

...Facebook started allowing people to have "usernames" on the site to allow people more direct access to your (more individualized) profile by having a distinct URL (i.e. "facebook.com/yourname"). Unfortunately, the username is permanent. But not unfortunately, because hilarity ensues. Thus, the internerds found a new cute way to mess with each other by "squatting" on certain names. You could be like this young man, who chose something slightly less refined than his actual name to fit his profile.

Anyway. This is is DESTROYING FRIENDSHIPS, too. Take, for example, this young fellow, who decided it would be cute to take his friend's name.

...

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5290496/have-you-been-facesquatting

yo you shouda went with 'daba park'... 'yung daba'... 'lil dibble' ... 'dabazzzZzz'... or simply 'no.1'

Im never gonna get one of these... if it makes it easier for people to find/track me... fuck that shit. It goes against my ninja upbringing.

in hindsight since i couldn't get dave.park, i should've gone with daba. oh well. 

dave park #1. da best!

I think people are making a big deal out of it because it's Facebook. 

Initially, their were whispers that the vanity URLs would be auctioned off. I actually wish they did that because I was curious to see how much $$$ they'd make from that.

 

As we reported on Friday night, Facebook usersregistered 200,000 custom usernames in their first 3 minutes of availability. By Saturday morning, 3 million usernames had been registered. And now, a quick update from the company: through Sunday, 5.75 million usernames had been taken across the site.

...

 

http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/facebook-custom-usernames-numbers/

 

Facebook's first idea was to auction them off in a standard "ascending" auction, where the URL and user name would have gone to highest bidder at the highest bid. The problem there was Facebook would have had to close millions of real-time auctions in a very short period of time, creating a tremendous load on its servers. Facebook also worried about giving wealthier users advantages over poorer ones.

 

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-facebook-turned-down-millions-to-give-away-vanity-urls-for-free-2009-6