Facebook Announces $5 Billion IPO

The time is ripe as Facebook announces a massive $5 billion USD IPO. There was little surprise as to if but rather when the most revolutionary start-up of our generation would make the leap into the public domain. The S-1 filing will as you imagine make many people extremely wealthy with founder Mark Zuckerberg leading the charge with his 28.2% stake, which based on a suggested $100 billion USD valuation by many accounts puts Zuckerberg’s wealth at over $28 billion. Other groups and personalities involved with large stakes include early 2005 investors Accel and partner Jim Breyer (11.4%), co-founder Dustin Moskovitz (7.6%), DST (5.4%) and Facebook’s first investor, Peter Thiel (2.5%). The 200-some page S-1 can be seen here. A point worth noting is that 12% of Facebook’s current revenues revolve around the juggernaut online gaming platform Zynga and much of their immediate business hinges on that relationship.

To put things in perspective, an average day at Facebook garners 2.7 billion Likes & Comments and 250 million uploaded photos per day through its 845 million daily users. Together this culminates in over 100 billion global friendships (to use the term friendships loosely).