Senior executives from Facebook will visit Ireland this week as the company begins its search for a building for its European headquarters in Dublin.

The company is expected to use serviced offices at first before renting 10,000 to 15,000 square feet. Although that requirement is small, industry expectations are that the company will grow rapidly thereafter in a similar way to search engine Google.

The company will focus its search in Dublin city centre and a suburban location is unlikely to be chosen.

Facebook, meanwhile, was forced to take an Irish social networking site to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) last year to stop it from using the domain Facebook.ie. Facebook took the case against Talkbeans Media, which registered the domain name Facebook.ie in February 2007.

Facebook took the case to WIPO in December of last year and in February the body ruled in favour of Facebook, after Talkbeans said that "it no longer wishes to be the registrant of the domain name and consents to its transfer without any admission of liability". It said it ceased using the domain name after Facebook made a complaint and denied it was "attempting to pass itself off as the complainant".

Talkbeans Media, owned by Odhran Ginnity, has an address in Shankill, according to documents lodged with the Companies Office. It made a loss after tax of €849 in 2007, its accounts state.

Talkbeans also registered Facebook as a business name with the Companies Registration Office in August of last year but notified the CRO in January that it would no longer be using the name.