Facebook paid US$8.5 million for the domain name fb.com, more than 42 times the amount the company originally paid for Facebook.com.
In November, Facebook revealed it was launching a revamped version of Messages.
Messages combines SMS, chat, email and messaging into one interface, although Mark Zuckerberg stressed that it is not e-mail.
One feature of the new Facebook Messages is that it gives the user a personalised Facebook.com e-mail address.
If a friend sends a message to a Facebook e-mail, the recipient automatically receives it in their Facebook Inbox.
Because Facebook’s employees already were using the Facebook.com domain for their e-mails, there was a need for another domain name.
“The Farm Bureau agreed to sell us fb.com and we in return have agreed not to sell farm subsidies,” Zuckerberg told TechCrunch.com in November.
AFBF officials revealed that the organisation had made $8.5 million by selling some of its domain names, but refused to name the buyers. The association still owns a collection of key domain names related to farming.
Since Facebook’s acquisition, all people visiting ‘fb.com’ are being redirected to ‘fb.org’, a domain name owned the Farm Bureau.
