Why did Facebook pay $8.5 million for fb.com?

Why did Facebook pay $8.5 million for fb.com?

Posted in technology

Facebook, the leading social networking site paid $8.5 million to buy fb.com - 42 times more than the company originally paid for facebook.com! But why spend so much money on a shorter domain name?

The answers is simple really – the fb.com domain was bought so the new public email service would work without interfering with the already @facebook.com email address used by Facebook's own employees.

The new Facebook Messages feature allows you to send personal Facebook emails that come from a fb.com email address. You get your own Facebook inbox where emails can be sent and received, just like hotmail.

The high price tag for fb.com was agreed because the previous owners - American Farm Bureau Federation already had control of the domain. Although their primarly address was fb.org they bought fb.com as an alternative address. Since the sale they now use the fb.org as their primary address with no .com alternative.

Fact



The original Facebook domain name was bought for $200,000 back in August 2005.