Blog / Free Advice and Other Musings

My what a large IPO you have.

Facebook is hoping to raise $5 billion by selling shares this spring (some reports are saying $10 billion—not sure who’s right but $5 billion is cited more often). This is larger than Google’s 2004 IPO that raised $1.9 billion at a valuation of $23 billion. Speculation is that Facebook’s valuation could be as high as $75-100 billion.

Buyers got a look at the financials yesterday, which showed the company made $1 billion in profit last year. 85% of its $3.71 billion in revenue is from advertising.

Other big stats:

• 845 million members, and more than half (483 million) return to the site daily
• Collectively, we have produced an average of 2.7 billion “Likes” and comments a day in the last 3 months of 2011 (Oct, Nov, Dec)

I suspect your company is not getting this much attention today so here’s a 1 Minute Marketing tip on increasing the visibility of your Facebook Page by linking it to your profile.

Other Facebook IPO stories

• The Wall Street Journal has a number of stats and comparisons to other internet IPOs.
• CBC TV video announcing that Facebook files for IPO
• Huffington Post highlights CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s private plan and base salary of $500,000 last year
• USA Today has a timeline of Facebook milestones (they aren’t nearly as embarrassing as some of my friends’ timelines)

As a note, my wolf in sheep’s clothing metaphor is more to do with mistakenly trusting that your Facebook content is private, not in regards to the IPO or Facebook’s valuation.