back to article Facebook files for IPO, seeks $5bn

As expected, Facebook has announced the terms of its initial public offering and is looking to raise $5bn. In the firm’s SEC S1 filing the company reported revenues of this year of $3.7bn, up from $2bn in 2011, while income has just hit $1bn, from $606m last year. The site reported 845 million monthly active users and 483 …

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  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Too big and too little

    What's the point?

    The company has been going so long (and grown so quickly) that its future expansion is quite limited - so not much scope for organic growth. Yet for all its size, it's only planning on raising $5Bn from the floatation.

    That's enough to land it with all the regulatory deadweight that a public company must conform to, but not cash enough for it to drastically change its business model. All FB could hope to do would be to gobble up other companies in exchange for it's own shares - presuming they hold their value on the stock market - and then hope it can assimilate whatever novel attribute the small-fry had into it's own corporate mass. A strategy that's not known for its successes.

    This IPO would make sense if the owners were planning to cash out and wanted to spend more time with their money. But in that case, without the founders' vision, who'd want to be left holding the shares?

    1. ratfox
      Boffin

      Regulations are the point

      They have to show their data, whether they do an IPO or not. They have too many shareholders to keep it secret. They don't have a choice.

      As for raising more cash, what for? Considering they have $3Bn on hand and are not using it, what would they do with more? Buy random companies for the lulz?

  2. Graham Lockley
    WTF?

    ?????

    >We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring

    He was being ironic right ?

    1. LaeMing
      Trollface

      Yes and no

      Yes, he was being ironic.

      No, he isn't aware of the fact.

  3. Graham Marsden
    WTF?

    "giving people control over what they share"???

    This from the guy whose attitude has always been "it's easier to get forgiveness than permission"?!

  4. Raumkraut

    The Cathedral and the Bazaar

    "We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph - a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date."

    I wonder if Zucky realises that Facebook itself is the epitome of a monolithic, top-down, platform?

  5. Bob 18
    Thumb Down

    Distributed Infrastructure

    Zuck wrote about how much challenging engineering they went through to enable this "rewiring." But I would point out that all this fancy networking and data center stuff is only necessary if you want to collect all this private data in one place and sell it to advertisers. The infrastructure required for a distributed social network like Diaspora (or Email) is a lot simpler.

  6. FozzyBear

    I hate to admit it but...

    Facebook does sit on some of the most valuable data available for marketers and advertisers. They have the ability to churn some huge profits by selling this information to the various market research groups out there, then selling advertising space after the coke heads have their target market compiled.

    The viability of the business comes down to how smart mark "the bitch" is in implementing the advertising and selling the user data to the research groups.

  7. LaeMing
    Unhappy

    Their business is trading human naccism and ignorance

    Business is looking good.

  8. rho
    Thumb Down

    5thousandmillion

    I didn't read any of the IPO documents, but is there anything there regarding paying dividends to shareholders?

    Dividends are a pretty good metric for judging a stock's performance. Now that the Greater Fool theory of investing looks like a handbook on how to turn a million dollars into half a million dollars in 30 days or less.

  9. Grease Monkey Silver badge
    Coat

    Facebook is going to float?

    It's a witch!

    Or maybe bread. Or apples. Or gravy.

  10. The Jase

    Shark!

    Its pretty much jumped the shark already.

    Forums (and kittehs) make the internet go round, and they killed forums within groups.

    Beginning of the end?

  11. Yag
    Trollface

    Only 5 billions?

    This is almost sensible...

    Almost.

  12. Derk
    Trollface

    Now!

    MZ thinks.....take the money and run!

  13. AbortRetryFail

    Anyone else catching the whiff of the hastily rewritten press release about this article? The author has forgotten to change "our" to "their" in one sentence.

  14. Derichleau
    Thumb Down

    What about UK data protection rights

    In the UK we have a right to opt-out of direct marketing - including online marketing that is targeted at an individual (Part II, section 11 DPA98). Are generations of UK data subjects going to forfeit this right just because Facebook in a US company. Why isn't Europe and the UK Government protecting our rights?

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