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At long last, the Holy Grail of Internet IPOs is here. Facebook filed Wednesday to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering.

In 2011, Facebook earned $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. As of December 31, Facebook had 845 million daily active users.

The company crossed the line into profitability in 2009, five years after it launched in founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. Facebook earned $229 million that year on sales of $777 million, and has remained profitable ever since. Advertising accounted for 85% of Facebook’s 2011 revenue, or almost $3.2 billion.

Facebook’s other revenue stream is its payment system for purchases within apps and games: Facebook Credits. Facebook keeps 30% of the revenue from those payments, and passes the remaining 70% on to the app developer. Those fees brought in $557 million for Facebook last year.

Revenue from Zynga, which makes FarmVille and other games played on Facebook, represented 12% of Facebook’s total revenue in 2011.

Another choice tidbit: In 2011, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg raked in a $500,000 base salary. But he requested — and will receive — only $1 per year in salary starting January 1, 2013.

Don’t feel too bad for Zuck, who remains the largest shareholder in the company he created. His total compensation in 2011 came to $1.48 million, according to Facebook’s calculations.

He was one of the lowest-paid among Facebook’s executive ranks. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg topped the list with a total package Facebook estimated at $30.9 million, almost all of it in stock.

Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer made an estimated $24.7 million — again, mostly in stock — while CFO David Ebersman collected an $18.7 million pay package. (more…)

With Facebook, it’s not a question of if it files for an IPO, but when. Rumours have been flying since the middle of 2011, a new report from AllThingsD suggests the social network is aiming to go public in the third week of May.

Faceboook is said that they will submit its S-1 filing within the next month, taking into account that the “Securities and Exchange Commission usually takes about three to four months”.

Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg stated a few weeks ago to the report that the company’s IPO was “inevitable” and said that it was “a process that all companies go through”.

Facebook is expected to hit 1 billion users by the Summer. The company’s impending IPO is likely to spark the next crop of angel investors, becoming one of the biggest Web offerings ever.

Could this spark another Dot.com boom?

Facebook has scheduled a press-only event for next Wednesday evening (January 18, 2012), without offering any hints what-so-ever about any announcement.

The invite-only event is taking place at the restaurant 25 Lusk in San Francisco. With the lack of detail on the invite, this makes us think it could be an announcement related to a completed financial transaction. Announcing something beforehand would break U.S. laws.

We would like to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment below!

The Delhi High Court has ordered Facebook India to implement a way to remove objectionable content or the sites will face a blackout.

Justice Suresh Kait warned that if the social network cannot monitor their content, India will follow China’s censorship lead.

“Like China, we will block all such websites,” Kait said Thursday.

But if Facebook begins to moderate content, it will be the same as if they had written it. Once the Internet heavyweights begin to interfere, they become legally responsible for content under the Indian Information Technology Act.

What are your thoughts about Internet companies coming up with a way to sort content to appease the Indian court, and more importantly what do you think the Indian Government accomplishes by blocking Facebook?

Based on the social network’s recent growth, UK digital marketing firm iCrossing is projecting that Facebook will pass the significant milestone of one billion users this August.

It’s been known that Facebook has seen a slow down in new user registrations in Western markets, like the United States, where it’s coming close to saturation point amongst Internet users, but developing markets are picking up the slack and pushing it towards the landmark. (more…)