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Seeking to raise $5 billion, giant social networking site Facebook has filed for its long-awaited initial public offering.
The IPO of the social network site, having over 800 million active users, is expected to be the biggest sale of shares by an internet company so far.
It filed paperwork to go public yesterday.
Facebook’s IPO would surpass rival Google’s 2004 offering of $1.9 billion. Earlier Google held the record for the largest US Internet IPO.
For long-time followers of the social network, this is an exciting time and a culmination of the site’s eight-year rise from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to world domination.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley will act as lead underwriter, with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and others to take secondary positions.
Shares are expected to hit the market in May under the stock symbol “FB“.
The company is seeking to raise $5 billion, according to this early filing, amounting to a lofty (and still tentative) valuation of almost $100 billion.
Going public also provides a rare glimpse into the internal stats previously kept private.
The service has 845 million active users, nearly half of which log in and actuate 2.7 billion likes and comments each day.
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