A couple of days ago Facebook made an announcement via live webcast about the future of digital messaging systems, not just their own, but the world's in general.

They have had in development an extension to the Facebook messaging system that will possibly change the way we all communicate digitally. It is a pretty big call, but with 1 in 5 people in the entire world now having a Facebook account it is fairly likely that this kind thing will take shape.

At the heart of the system is the concept that everyone will have their own facebook email address based off the @facebook.com suffix.
What this has done though is created a mad scramble over the last 48 hours for both business pages and individual accounts as many people secure a vital online presence.

Our advice - if you havent already sorted out a facebook page for your business do it now. Like right now. Don't even wait 30 minutes. The pages are getting devoured at an amazing rate. This is one of those once in a lifecycle opportunity. If you have the feeling that facebook is going to be around for quite some time, then invest the time right now and get in quick.

The pages that you set up become your email address. We have a business page called The Big Picture Productions which then becomes thebigpictureproductions @ facebook.com. We would have liked thebigpicture @ facebook.com but this is taken by some snotty kid  Elijah Kihlstadius. Bit slow on that one. Lesson learnt.

Another thing to do is to protect your brand and set up as many pages based around your brand as you can. You will have to manage these pages as well, but it also means that someone else cannot use them too, so there is a benefit to this extra work as you effectively take them off the market.