Facebook has confirmed that it is to float, in a move that will see the company valued at $80bn – $100bn (£50bn – £62.5bn). The social networking juggernaut says it is seeking to raise $5bn, much lower than analysts had predicted, through the IPO. Even this figure, however, would easily eclipse the $1.7bn Google raised through its IPO in 2004, for 7 per cent of the company.
Facebook’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that it generated $1bn in revenues in 2011, almost all from advertising, 65 per cent up on the previous year. The company currently has 845m users, 443m daily users, and 100bn ‘friendships’. There are 2.7bn Likes and Comments, and 250m photo uploads each day on the Facebook platform.
The filing also reveals that founder Mark Zuckerberg owns 28.4 per cent of the company. It also contains a letter in which he says: “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected. We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do… 
“Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries. There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.”
Quite how potential investors will feel about these aspirations is a moot point.
