Facebook Announces IPO
Facebook has announced today, for the first time, it will be selling shares in the company with a total estimated value of $5 billion.
The social networking site, which this year will be 8 years old, is taking strong steps towards making social networking profitable.
Mark Zuckerberg, the current CEO of Facebook and it’s founder, aged 27 is now estimated to be worth nearly $20 billion and owns 28.4% of the company. The Facebook IPO is set to be the biggest in history for an internet based company with as much excitement, if not more, than there was when Google announced their IPO in 2004.
Facebook is now estimated to have 845 million users worldwide, with approximately 30 million users in Britain alone. The company turned a profit of around $1 billion last year.
Despite mounting pressure from outsiders to turn Facebook more away from their current mission to make the world more open, towards an even more profitable company, Mr Zuckerberg is resisting the pressure and insisting that he wants to stay on the current course the company is on.
In a letter released by Mark Zuckerberg, he said:
“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.”
