Facebook to become biggest ever online IPO

Facebook has filed its long-awaited plans for a float on the US stock market. The social networks initial public offering (IPO) of US$5 billion of shares is the largest for an internet company since Google in 2004.

Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has penned a letter to prospective investors.

In the letter Zuckberberg says that the company “was built to accomplish a social mission” and claims, “we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services”. However, the IPO will bring increased pressure on Facebook to ramp up the monetisation of its users and there remains some scepticism around social networks and their ability to maximise advertising.

Sir Martin Sorell said in September, “I have some fundamental doubts about the ability to monetise social platforms…it is dangerous territory if you try to over-monetise it.”