Factbox: The world's largest social network

An employee writes a note on the message board at the new headquarters of Facebook in Menlo Park, California January 11, 2012. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

An employee writes a note on the message board at the new headquarters of Facebook in Menlo Park, California January 11, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith

SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Feb 1, 2012 6:57pm EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook filed on Wednesday to raise a targeted $5 billion in a hotly anticipated initial public offering, setting the stage for Silicon Valley's biggest-ever IPO. Here are some key facts about the company:

Founded: 2004

Original name: thefacebook.com

Headquarters: Menlo Park

Employees: 3,200 as of December 31, 2011

Revenue: $3.71 billion in 2011

Founder and CEO: Mark Zuckerberg

Earliest investors: PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invested $500,000 in 2004, followed by Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million in 2005

Biggest stakeholder: Mark Zuckerberg, who holds a 56.9 pre-IPO voting stake Other top stakeholders: Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, DigitalSky Technologies; entrepreneurs Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus, Sean Parker

Number of users: 845 million active monthly users worldwide, including 161 million active monthly users in the United States

Average time spent on Facebook: Worldwide users spend about 6 hours a month; 7 hours in United States

(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Gary Hill)
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Comments (1)
paintcan wrote:
How much employment is this capitalization going to create? As I understand it. Most of the stock – over 90% of it is in the hands of the founders? The founders will get stinking rich and have their dreams come true but that won’t do more than boost the sales of luxury homebuilders and carmakers. It’s not like they will be building factories, employee housing and towns etc. Facebook is touted as a kind of super democracy but the wealth it is creating is anything but. These guys make the old robber barons like Vanderbilt and Carnegie; look like they worked too hard for too little.

I suppose this also means that the idea that long tern shareholders could expect even a small return when the company goes bankrupt is very out of date? 850 million free users served by 3200 employees. It makes every other employer that is actually producing a good or service look grossly inefficient. But it suggests that if countries had nothing but Facebook type “industries”, they would be bankrupt with enormously high unemployment, unless governments taxed their profits so highly they could support all the out of work.

Feb 03, 2012 9:53am EST  --  Report as abuse
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