It appears the march toward the hottest initial public offering in several years has taken a major step forward.

Facebook, which is widely expected to be filed by April (and hasn’t even selected its investment bankers yet), reportedly chose a firm to handle its investor relations.

Although it has to be officially announced, Kara Swisher of AllThingsD reported on Friday that Facebook has selected The Brunswick Group, which edged out rivals Sard Verbinnen & Co., Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, and Kekst and Company.

Swisher added that the Brunswick Group had a leg up on the Facebook opportunity because it worked with the social network a year ago, when Goldman Sachs took a piece of the social media company and made shares available to some of its high-net-worth investors.

What remains to be seen is what Facebook does with the Brunswick Group. Over the summer, Groupon hired this same agency ahead of what was then one of the hottest IPOs of the year. However, CEO Andrew Mason went on to disregard quiet period restrictions and create one PR and IR mess after another. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg will likely be careful not to relive Mason’s mistakes.

Facebook also suffered a PR setback when it hired Burson-Marsteller last spring to conduct a whisper campaign against Google. The partnership was a black eye for both companies.

Tom Johansmeyer is group marketing director of Cross Border, which publishes IR magazine, Corporate Secretary and Inside IPO.

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