I got my facebook URL this morning. I had meant to try right after midnight, but then I completely forgot about the whole thing until this morning when I checked facebook and saw the notice.<p>I'm not totally sure what difference it makes though. Anyone who wanted to find me on Facebook could already search by name or email address.<p>I get that Facebook wants to be more like Myspace and make it easy for people to communicate the URL of their profile, but almost any pronounceable string is just fine.<p>Because of domain names, which you can actually own (mostly), there seems to be a concept that any popular service that lets you create unique string/ID needs to have your exact name or brand or whatever for maximum...something.<p>Meanwhile, you can buy your own domain name and host it for $10-$20/year. Put up a page with nothing but links to your various online profiles. Then tell people to find you at "me.com".
(I posted this on the website's comments, but anyway:) It would be terrible etiquette if a big website like Facebook were to take money to take away someone else’s username/unique URL so that someone else who wasn’t fast enough could have it.<p>As much as I understand where you’re coming from, you were simply too late to get robertjmoore, and the person who did get that Facebook URL should not be penalized because of your willingness to pay cash.