Most of us have been asking how we can transfer our facebook profile username [also known as vanity URL] to our facebook page.
There are 2 reasons why we want to do that:-
1. We have registered our username for our profile earlier and now we have created a page and would like to transfer the name to our page. An ordinary facebook profile requires your approval to add friends while a facebook fan page requires only someone to click on the LIKE button to become your fans. There is also a limit of 5,000 friends to a profile but no limit to a fan page. So for marketing purpose, it is more suitable to use a facebook page.
2. You are trying to register a username for your page and due to the ill and sicked facebook interface, you ended up register the username to your profile instead!!! This was what happened to me and I have read so many feedback that the same thing has happened to many facebook users as well!
This is because when you try to register your page username under the page settings page, you will never have thought that the first username you provide will actually go to the profile instead! REPEAT: EVEN if you are doing all of these in the page settings page by clicking on the link labeled as "Create a username for this page?" !!!!
Before you can set a username for your page, you will need 25 likes. The username setting will be disabled until you reach it. And so you wait patiently for your 25th fan to click 'like' and rush to register a username. After you got it only you realized it has been assigned to your profile instead! And I am shocked this has happened for so long to so many people and yet the facebook programmers still haven't do anything about it!
And please remember that there is no way for you to contact facebook. There is no telephone number. There is no contact form. You are on your own.
To disallow cyber squatting of facebook usernames, i.e. reserving a username in the hope to sell it later for profit just like what they did to the domain names [the .com], facebook set out the following rules:-
1. You can only change your facebook profile username once. If you register Banana as your first username and hate it, you can change it to Strawberry later but you only have 1 chance. After that you won't be able to change it anymore and facebook claims that after your change your username to Strawberry, your previous username Banana will not be made available to anyone else!!! It will be locked out. So you cannot sell this username.
2. For facebook fan page, you DO NOT have the chance to change your username. You only have 1 chance and that's the first chance. If you pick a wrong one, it will be like a bad tattoo on your body. So make sure you choose wisely.
They have to work very hard to stop cyber squatting or else there will be a lot of fake facebook accounts and pages created every seconds in hope to profit from it. This will be a nightmare to facebook and its community. Maybe we will have 200 Bill Clintons and 4,000 Mariah Carey.
Facebook usernames are NOT case sensitive, but they will display it the way you register it. So Strawberry or strawBERRY or strawberry all belongs to you but once directed to facebook, it will be cased to your registered casing - Strawberry. So you may want to make sure it is the correct casing you want because you won't be able to change it later as well.
We are not cyber squatters. We have very valid reasons to transfer our profile username (which belongs to us anyway) to our fan page (which also belongs to us). There is also no money involved. And due to facebook sicked interface, many of us have actually accidentally registered our page username to our profile!
What stated by facebook officially is only half true. Old usernames will be made available again but not immediately, creating an unknown black out period to make cyber squatting difficult to work out.
After you execute your only right to change your profile username to something else and immediately rush to register the old name to your fan page, it will be stated as "Not Available". This will definitely scare the shit out of you.
Do not panic! Many of us has reported that once you wait enough, the old username will be released and the "good" news is that you only need to wait from several days to around 2 weeks. I have mine released around 14-16 days which I can't remember correctly. All you need to do is check the availability everyday and wait until it is available. DO NOT give up and register for a subpar username that you really don't want because that will be permanent! Patience is the key here.
My username is released on 9 March 2011 which means the information in this blog post is at least valid until this date. I will have the comment form open for this article below and please report your positive (or negative) experience on changing your username so it can help other people who have the same problem.
Facebook can change the rules anytime they want and we hope this information will still be valid as long as it can.
Disclaimer: PLEASE execute the username change/transfer at your own risk because there is no guarantee it will work. It has work for me and many others but it still doesn't mean it will work for you! Maybe you need to go to the church more for this.