There was a lot of speculation that Facebook would be valued at about $100B — but the high end of the range of stock prices it identified in an SEC filing today suggest that the company’s worth a maximum of $96B. While the amounts could change, Facebook says it plans to sell 337.4M shares — equal to $10.6B based on the mid-point of the range, $31.50. About $5.7B would go to the company, which says it might use some cash “for acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies, or other assets.” Another $5B would go to current investors selling shares including Accel Partners and Digitial Sky Technologies. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg also is selling 30.2M shares, After the IPO, he’ll control 57.3% of the votes from the two-tiers of stock. Once the SEC approves Facebook’s prospectus, executives can go on a road show to interest institutional investors in buying stakes in the social networking giant. Shortly after, the company would be traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “FB.” Facebook says that net earnings in the first three months of this year fell 12% to $205M on revenues of $1.1B, up 44.7%.


I’d expect this to be a risky buy. Facebook currently is on top of the world.
But in many instances, like professional networking or image sharing, it has proven not so good.
I’d say the only way for Facebook is either stay where they are, or to shink moderately.
Social Media is only at the beginning, and it’s quite likely that Facebook is going the way of the social media dinosaur, MySpace.
I think the future of social media is the niche. It’s totally uninteresting for a filmmaker to connect to people working in other fields.
Today’s FT goes deep on whether you should buy the stock. In a nutshell, “their business model is just too creepy”