When Facebook first released the username tool a few weeks ago, they said that you better like the username that you select because you’ll never be able to change it. Now Facebook is modifying that policy to allow users to “change their username once”. It’s pretty easy to switch your username. All you need to do is visit your account settings page and click on “Change” next to the “Username” setting. Facebook will then let you know if the new username you’d like is available.

So why is Facebook letting users change their username now? Facebook hasn’t made an official announcement but as far as we know, one of the main reasons was that a number of people thought it would be funny to steal their friends names (like this facesquatter). There are also many people that didn’t want the names they came up with.

My guess is that Facebook has received countless emails about username issues so to make things easier, they’ve gone ahead and let users make a one-time change. I’m not quite sure why they don’t let users change it at will but my best guess is that these usernames will be tied to other products later down the road. Check out Read/Write/Web for more on this new policy.