The best domain names can still be worth millions of dollars, with Facebook spending well over $8 million to purchase a new dot com, which it had already set its sights on.

      The social media leader bought FB.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an impressive $8.5 million late yesterday. But Facebook does not intend to use this new domain for public use, but will rather reserve it for employees and internal communication.

      While the agreement to purchase FB.com was signed in November 2010, journalists have only now discovered just how much Facebook paid for the valuable domain name.

      Some social networking analysts suggest that the new address will be used to host employee e-mail accounts, while others believe that it may be the first major step as Facebook prepares to launch a fully functional webmail service, in order to more effectively compete with rivals Gmail and Hotmail.

      It has been more than five years since Facebook last spent a significant amount of money buying a new domain name. In August 2005, the then fledgling social networking website bought Facebook.com for $200,000.

      This was a major change for the company, as previously the social networking website was known as "The Facebook," and had a corresponding domain name.

      2010 was an important year in acquisitions for Facebook and every sign suggests that 2011 will also see the social media website continue to expand its empire. Last year, Facebook bought Nextstop, a recommendation website, as well as Chai Labs.

Source from Bluhalo