The amazing growth of Facebook has been addressed time and time again.
It is an amazing phenomena and it has certainly managed to find a seriously important niche in the lives of many people.
Additionally Facebook is making great inroads in the business market, not only as a competitor to Google in terms of online advertising, but also as a place to promote your business and products.
Facebook Business Fan Pages (or whatever they are called this week) are somewhat of a must for businesses that have a significant percentage of their market socially interacting on Facebook (and that would be most businesses they can assume).
As they showed you last week Facebook Business Fan Pages can be customized in much the same way as a website to show video and slideshows, promote offers, encourage interaction and even sell goods and services.

So if most people are on Facebook and they can have all the things you mention above then why do they need a website at all?

The Case for Only Having a Facebook Business Fan Page and No Website There are certainly reasons why a business might decide to limit their online marketing to Facebook.
Here are just a few of the main ones;-

• Their clients are predominantly on Facebook.
  They know you should go where your clients are.
  
• Their requirements are pretty basic.
  A Facebook Fan Page (or a few of them) is sufficient for the needs.
  
• A website is more expensive to purchase and host than a Facebook Business Fan Page.
  
• They can do some really cool things like have my fans recommend my fan page to their friends.
  
• A fan page ties in really well with Facebook advertising.
  
• They can get a really great interaction going with their clients on Facebook.
  
• They can communicate news, new products, special offers more effectively to my fan page fans than I can via traditional methods such as email marketing
• Facebook's amazing growth suggests it is the future.
  Websites are so 2009!
• No more spending excessive money and time on improving my position in Google.
  

So.
A pretty compelling case isn't it? A huge potential market and a growing one at that, less money to spend, quicker and simpler access to (and interaction with) those that might purchase their products and services and some new features that websites can't commonly provide.
They're sold! Going to sack my web developer, raise 2 fingers in the direction of Google and make me a million!!!!! Whoa, you mean there is another side to this story? Well, only if you're quick as they have phone calls to make - note to self - "sack annoying, expensive and self righteous web developer - They're on Facebook now"...
The Case For Continuing to Maintain Your Own Website Certainly a number of compelling reasons above for dumping the old brochure website and betting the future on Facebook.
In every situation, though, there are arguments for and against and an old decision making trick is to write them either side of a piece of paper as the 'for' and the 'against'.
So here are some of the 'against';-

• You own your website.
  You do not own your Facebook account.
  Break the rules and it could disappear in an instant.
  What would that do to your business?
• People complain about being at the mercy of Google.
  If you give up search traffic for Facebook you may have just gone from the frying pan into the proverbial..
  ...
  
• They come and they go! AOL (America Online), Yahoo, Compuserve, Friendster, Orkut, MySpace etc..
  ..
  ..
  Can you be sure that Facebook will dominate for a longer period than these?
• Facebook Fan Pages are programmed in FBML.
  This is a combination of Facebook's own proprietary functions, html and CSS (Cascading Stylesheets).
  It is kludgy and requires a certain level of skill to add pages (read - you will likely have to pay for assistance to add a Facebook Fan Page)
• There is advertising to the right of your content.
  You have no control over those adverts.
  
• With your own website (especially if you use WordPress) you can continue to add content yourself whenever you want to without having to know anything more than how to write.
  With Facebook Fan Pages you need to understand code to edit custom Fan Pages.
  
• Whilst you can set a page you develop as the landing page for people that are not fans of your website, fans of your website will always land on your wall so your chances of selling to them are significantly diminished.
  
• You are limited to 10 of your own pages max and the tabs for those pages do not fit across the page so the links to many of your pages will be hidden from view.
  

Your Facebook account can be switched off

It's just not easy to add cool stuff to your Facebook Fan Pages...
simple as!

In fairness to Facebook there are moves afoot to replace FBML with iframes and something called XFBML.
This will likely provide extra functionality in that all of the code and content will reside elsewhere i.
e on your server (or your developer's server) or on Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud etc so you will be able to provide (we believe) additional functionality not currently supported by Facebook's servers.
..
..
But you will still need the help of a developer to make all this happen unless you are code savvy.
Reviewing the Ledger - What Should I Do? There are many reasons for making sure your best content (where possible) is on your Facebook Fan Page.
You can interact with people in an environment where they feel comfortable, safe and protected.
A certain percentage of those people will add their thoughts about your product and your business and many of those thoughts will prove helpful to other potential clients.
They can share information about your products and services quickly and easily with their friends as well.
So.
No doubt.
You got to have a Facebook Business Fan Page.
It's a no-brainer.
Your website? Well that's a no-brainer too.
Your website is YOURS.
The content is under YOUR CONTROL.
Facebook cannot shut you down nor can they change the rules overnight.
You can add as much content as you want and you can make it exceptionally easy for people to find it.
If you are using a content management system such as WordPress you can add content and make changes to your site yourself without having to deal with that moody developer who never seems to return your calls (yes these people do exist!).
If Facebook is overtaken by a new fad or its dominance is challenged you will still have your own web presence that will last the distance.

In short, have both Facebook Business Fan Pages and your own website.
Use them each for what they are best suited to and see your business opportunities grow as a result.