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?

Exact details are rather scarce, but Facebook will be launching a music service later this month. That’s right — Facebook may be about to unleash unlimited free music to all its users. Music is enjoyed almost universally, and free music services have been among the fastest-growing on the web — Napster, to name but one.

Facebook is partnering with top music services Spotify, MOG and Rdio to let users stream music on Facebook. Spotify is a service that lets you listen to virtually any song for free on your desktop, with the occasional, but infrequent, ad. Users can pay a small fee to remove the ads or use the service on their phones.

Though Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking service, with more than 750 million users, founder Mark Zuckerberg is keen to increase the amount of time users spend in the Facebook environment.

Music is said to be just one aspect of the strategy to improve Facebook’s “stickiness” and it is also expected to partner with other media content owners such as movie studios.

“They are working on a platform for music where the goal is to create a connective tissue for fans,” said one person familiar with the talks who asked not to be named as plans are confidential.

Facebook has declined to comment on its new music platform before, but in July several technology blogs reported a software engineer had uncovered programming code for a Facebook product called Vibes, for music downloading. (more…)

Facebook is reportedly in talks to hire President Obama’s former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs for a senior communications role, the New York Times reported.

No formal offer has been made yet to Gibbs, but after two years at the White House, the president’s ex-spokesman has high-level ties that could be attractive to Facebook as it prepares for the world’s largest-ever public offering — valued by some investors at more than $60 billion, according to The Times.

Gibbs would work under Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vp for global communications, marketing and public policy who joined the company from Google in 2008. (more…)

Facebook once again announced today that it has no plans to launch a Facebook-branded phones with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, following reports that it planned to launch an official tie-up next month.

“This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs and integrated them into their device in an interesting way,” said Dan Rose, head of business development at Facebook.

London business newspaper City A.M. had reported that HTC would unveil two new Facebook-branded mobile phones at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, in a story that was widely picked up in other media.

“The rumors around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown,” Rose told journalists at a company event in London. Asked whether the device would be Facebook-branded, he answered: “No.”

Mobile is an increasingly important driver of traffic to Facebook, which says over 250 million users per month access the the site on various mobile devices.