MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Facebook preparing for public offering; company value over 100 billion USD
Mark Zuckerberg, 27, founded the company from a Harvard room in 2004 Facebook is preparing to file for an initial public offering as early as October or November that could value the popular social networking site at more than 100 billion US dollars, financial news channel CNBC reported this week.
Goldman Sachs (GS.N) is leading the chase to manage the lucrative offering, which could come in the first quarter of 2012, CNBC said.
With more than 500 million users, Facebook is the world's most popular Internet social network and one of the most hotly-anticipated initial public offerings on Wall Street.
Facebook, whose chief operating officer last month said that an IPO was “inevitable,” declined to comment on the latest report about its timing for an offering.
Anticipation about a Facebook's future plans comes at a time of heightened investor appetite for shares of fast-growing social networking companies.
Professional networking site LinkedIn Corp (LNKD.N) launched its own IPO last month, valuing the company at about 7 billion USD.
Earlier this month, daily deals site Groupon Inc filed to raise up to 750 million USD in an IPO, fuelling speculation that Internet valuations have become too rich.
Founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 by the now 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook threatens Internet companies like Google Inc (GOOG.O) and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) as it becomes a popular online destination for Web surfers and an important marketing channel for advertisers.
Facebook was valued at 50bn earlier this year when Goldman Sachs invested in the company.
Recent transactions of Facebook shares on the secondary market have valued the company between 78 billion and 81 billion USD, according to information on the website of Sharespost, an exchange for trading shares in private companies.
Facebook is expected to generate roughly 4 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, up from 1.86 billion a year earlier, according to market research firm eMarketer.
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Read all commentsAlexa recent data reports during the same period facebook saw a decline of over 6 million users in north america, onlymeworld saw an increase of 1800% in that same period. It's true their membership is small compared to Facebook, but at their rate of growth, in no time at all they will become a major competitor.
Jun 15th, 2011 - 03:14 am 0Perhaps the reason onlymeworld is experiencing this kind of growth is because it doesn't it's users for their real names & email addresses. Or maybe because it has custom privacy settings. Or maybe because if you were to combine facebook, twitter, and linkedln all into one your have onlymeworld. Or maybe it's because they don't track their users on the web.
I don't know about you, but I don't think Facebook is worth $100 Billion in Q1 of 2012.
ONLYMEWORLD the new facebook alternative, or perhaps the New Industry Standard?!
Adverts allowed on Mercopress ?
Jun 15th, 2011 - 11:54 am 0Free advertising?
Jun 15th, 2011 - 01:16 pm 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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