Okay here is what I did:
Let's see what we have here:
Inherited an Old FB profile and an Old FB Page.
Created a New (Timeline) FB Business Page.
Merged the Old FB Profile into the New FB Business Page.
Went into the New FB Business Page and tried to set it's FB Username/URL to <Business-Name>, clicking
Check AvailabilityFailed,
name not available.
Let's try renaming the username / URL of the page:
- Went into Old FB Profile, it's username/url was <Business-Name>.
- Noting that the Old FB Profile had been assigned the FB username/url I intended to assign to the New FB Business Page, on the Old FB Profile I renamed it to <Business-Name>1.
Maybe if we deactivite the account:
- Went back into the New FB Business Page, and once again tried to set it's FB Username/url to <Business-Name>, clicking
Check Availability - Fail, more fail;
name not available.
At this point I started reading the facebook faq on usernames, by clicking the handy little link at the bottom which reads Learn more about Facebook usernames I learned the following things:
You can only change your username/url once.
There is a way to file for someone infringing upon my intellectual property rights.
- (Trouble is, nobody is infringing upon my IP rights, it's my own profile doing the infringing), so that was a dead end.
Went back into the Old FB Profile, this time I was given permission to deactivate the Old FB Profile, and so I went into
Down-arrow->Account Settings->Security->Deactivate Your Account, and proceeded to deactivate the Old FB Profile.Returned once again to the New FB Business page, and (you guessed it!) tried to set the New Business Page's Username/URL to <Business-Name>.
And just like before
name not available.
Perhaps if we migrate the profile to a business page?
After a few more minutes of browsing the documentation or maybe looking at a question on the Webapps SE, I came across something that told me I could change the old profile page into a new Business page using the URL:
And the migration worked, after re-activating the de-activated user profile account, I successfully migrated the user profile to a new business page.
At this point I did the sensible thing and once again attempted to use the <Business-Name> following the set of steps I repeated 3 times earlier checking the username/url of the Migrated Facebook Profile Business Account to see if it still retained the <Business-Name>1 which it of course still did; and checked the New FB Business Page to see if the username/url could again be set to <Business-Name> which it once again could not.
Maybe one last merger will do the trick...
And in my very last ditch effort, I decided to rename the title of the Migrated Facebook Business Page and the New Facebook Business Page to the same name so that I could merge the two together, which I successfully did.
But now at my last attempt to fix the problem and test setting the username/url once again to <Business-Name> it has told me that alas I cannot, cannot, cannot change the username/url of my last (and finally single) New FB Business page to <Business-Name>
What else can I do from here?
I have pretty much exhausted my options at this point and I can't think of anything to do but file an IP infringement claim upon myself, or delete my account and start from scratch.
I really thought that renaming a page or profile that was also "owned" by me, would have resulted in the username/rul being "freed-up" for use in other pages.
So what is the correct course of action at this point? Is there anything I haven't tried?
Noting that the Old FB Profile had been assigned the FB username/url I intended to assign to the New FB Business Page, on the Old FB Profile I renamed it to <Business-Name>1.Now that the username is released I don't think there is much else you can do other than get in contact with Facebook