At precisely 11:01 tonight (in your time zone) you will be able to register a username for your profile on Facebook.
What this means, to use myself as an example, is that my profile url would go from this:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.phpid=767149094&ref=profile
to this:
http://www.facebook.com/gregbussmann.
Ah, much better. If I can get my hands on gregbussmann, that is.
A lot of what I am reading on the topic is making it sound as if you need to be on Facebook claiming your name by 11:02 or else it will be gone forever, or that someone else may grab your name and try to sell it back to you. I don’t think this will happen, as Facebook has made it so a user can only have one user name, it can never be changed, and they are not transferable.
That said, if your name is Mike Jones you may want to be there right away to grab it, and if you have a brand name that is important to you, I would advise not waiting too long.
Just like domain names and web-based email addresses, it is first come, first served, so the longer you wait, the better chance your name, as you want it to appear, will be taken.
At any rate, the Facebook FAQ’s are a good place to get more information.
I’m anxious to get on with this.
The actual URL is http://www.facebook.com/username/ for users to get their own.
As I write this, about 14 minutes left until it opens.