Facebook paid the American Farm Bureau Federation US$8.5m to acquire the “fb.com” domain name.
According to Reuters, during an annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, American Farm Bureau Federation officials said they earned $8.5m by selling domain names.
The bureau, with 6m members, owns four dozen domain names related to farming and has been using fb.org as its own.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that the social network purchased fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation in November after revealing its new messaging service.
As the service gave users an “@facebook.com” email address, staff at Facebook with that form of email address had to switch to another, hence the need to purchase fb.com.
Typing fb.com into the address bar will also call up the Facebook home page, providing a slightly quicker way of accessing the site.
