Inside Facebook: the Facebook Book

Comment by Massimo Moruzzi

June 9, 2007 @ 12:27 am

what about facebook.com in other languages?

Comment by Rachel =)

July 17, 2007 @ 2:43 pm

how about a sneeky way to get into facebook if the facebook.com url is blocked by administrator?

Comment by Chris L.

September 19, 2007 @ 12:56 pm

Why the Spanish equivalent of Facebook.com will be sold for millions of dollars and is positioned be the highest selling domain of all time.

Introduction
Facebook.com is currently in the top 10 global websites in the world with a recent internal evaluation by Peter Thiel of $10 billion. According to statistics found on alexa.com, Facebook.com is experiencing exponential growth of 3-4% per week and at this rate is expected to reach 200 million users in a year.

Spanish Language
Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world with a latin alphabet and in fact, far outpaces that of other Latin languages including Portugese, French, and German. Spanish is also the second most spoken language in the United States where facebook is a top 6 website. The market for Spanish internet users is positioned to grow at significant rates over the next decade while it currently accounts for only 1/10 of internet users.

Hi5.com
Hi5.com currently dominates the Spanish market of social websites. However, Hi5 was first to develop a language application for Spanish speakers, while facebook.com is currently developing language applications and is proven from their recent posting on insidefacebook.com discussing “facebook now in your language.” Facebook is positioned to break into this vast market of Spanish internet users and overtake Hi5 much as it has in the UK when it overtook Bebo.com.

The second advantage of librodecara.com is the name facebook is unique compared to other top domains. Most domains in the top 500 do not translate into Spanish, for example yahoo, google, orkut, and wikipedia. Even the small percentage of the top 500 domains that do translate into Spanish are not naturally thought to be the English version of the website. For example, the extremely popular domains apple.com and live.com Spanish translations would not necessarily have an impact on Spanish users. In other words, Spanish internet users would not necessarily think of Apple computers or a search engine when they type the Spanish equivalent of these words. Apple.com could mean a fruit and live.com could be a health style or a popular band. This is not true for Facebook since it is a distinctive domain name. Facebook consists of two words forming a unique, simple name and the name has only become very popular due to facebook.com’s rapid growth. Spanish speakers are much more inclined to think of Facebook.com when searching for the domain librodecara.com.

Other Advantages
There are several advantages to owning a Spanish equivalent domain among the top 10 globally. First, if someone owned facbook.com or facebok.com; facebook would sue the owner of these websites over copyright laws and win. Previous cases can be seen in google suing domain squatters over copyright issues including gogle.com, goooge.com, etc. and the result of the case favored google. However, foreign equivalent domain names are not part of domain copyright laws. A previous case involved whatshappenin.com suing quepasa.com over copyright domains rights. The case set a precedence for foreign equivalent domains due to quepasa.com keeping the rights of their domain. Domain owners cannot claim rights to their foreign equivalents.

Second, Facebook is ready to do an IPO in 2008 or 2009. Websits that go public and have a global presence usually respond to their shareholders with the extra capital by registering all domains that could be mistaken for facebook.com, especially the Spanish equivalent with the popular .com. While most websites will not ever have the capability to file an IPO due to revenues never reaching $100 million, Facebook is already generating more than those revenues and is poised to generate 5-10 times more revenue in several years. Furthermore, there is much talk of facebook becoming the web within the web, the new microsoft, and reaching unprecented traffic globally. This will provide plenty of cash for necessary expenditures when facebook decides to purchase librodecara.com.