You will most likely have heard, Facebook has launched vanity URLs ( for example, facebook.com/yourcompanyname) for individuals and companies. This is an opportunity to increase your coverage online, but you must be quick or else someone will beat you to it. Even if at this moment in time you are not thinking about creating a Facebook group my advice would be to go ahead and register your vanity URL anyway. Most well known brands have made their move already, so don't delay.

What does this mean for the B2B sector? Well, although Facebook is thought of very much as a B2C social media tool, we would recommend registering your brand name anyway. Facebook is one of the most popular social media tools out there and this is something you cannot ignore. There is a lot of nice functionality in Facebook that could be utilised by a B2B company: letting people know about events, uploading video and pictures, engaging in debate etc. Don't rule it out just because it is used mainly as a social facilitator.

Update: It has since become apparent that Facebook set some prerequisites to the vanity URL for companies. Firstly they have decided you need 1000 fans or more to have a vanity URL on your fan page. Secondly, you must have had a page since 31 May 2009.

Another update: Good news for smaller companies: Facebook will lift the ban on 1000 minimum fans on June 28th.