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.

It’s not yet known on which stock exchange Facebook will trade, through it said it plans to use the ticker symbol “FB.”
Facebook will likely re-file its paperwork several times over the coming months. Those updates will add more details and could even restate some of the financial information detailed in Wednesday’s filing.

How much Facebook is worth: In this initial paperwork, companies don’t declare how many shares they’re going to sell, or how much those shares will cost. Those details will be added in an updated filing shortly before trading begins.

Without that share price information, Facebook’s valuation is still speculative.

Facebook has its own guesses, though. The company said it conducted its own valuation of its stock at the end of each quarter, and as of December 31 determined it to be worth $29.73 a share.

Trading won’t begin for several months, as Facebook now has to field questions from regulators and court investors for its stock sale.

Most analysts estimate Facebook’s valuation will fall somewhere between $85 billion to $100 billion. But the value of Web companies can be extremely volatile.

A recent example: Zynga (ZNGA). The FarmVille maker’s IPO filing reported that it valued its shares in August 2011 at $17.20 each, which gave the company a valuation of $14 billion. But when Zynga went public in December, shares sold for just $10 — valuing the company at $7 billion.

Several other Internet companies made their public debuts in 2011, but the end of the year proved to be a turbulent time for the sector. Shares of Groupon (GRPN), Pandora (P), Zillow (Z), LinkedIn (LNKD) and Angie’s List (ANGI) all suffered steep double-digit losses for November, though most clawed back at least a bit in December or January.

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.

Facebook could give an important boost to its fledgling music streaming partners as they try to compete in a digital music sector dominated by Apple’s iTunes’s download store. Apple is also readying a streaming service called iTunes Match expected to launch soon.

The largest music subscription service, Rhapsody, has about 800 000 paying users after nearly 10 years.

Another senior executive close to the talks said social networking was important to help overcome one of the key challenges for digital music companies: how to help fans discover new music rather than just search for artists and songs they already know.

“Your friends are engaging with you on Facebook,” he said. “It’s the new form of radio or TV.”

The music platform is expected to be unveiled at Facebook’s developer conference, which begins on September 22.

On Thursday, Facebook unveiled their new high tech and futuristic-looking data center in Prineville, Oregon. Even more impressively, the project is open source, meaning Facebook will actually share what the company has learned about designing energy-reducing, cost-efficient computer servers and data centers.

Facebook claims their green data center uses 38 percent less energy to do the same work as its existing facilities, while costing 24 percent less – and they want other companies to adopt the technology.

The Facebook data center uses custom-designed servers, power supplies, server racks and battery backup systems to achieve an initial power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.07, compared to 1.5 for its existing facilities. In the winter, the data center will re-use hot aisle air to heat offices.

Facebook also announced the formation of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide initiative that it says will share best practices for creating the most economical and energy-efficient data centers. Facebook will start by publishing specifications and mechanical designs for hardware including motherboards, power supply, server chassis, server racks and battery cabinets. The specs can be found at www.opencompute.org.

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.

Gibbs, who left the White House in February after two years, and a spokesman for Facebook declined to comment, the paper said. Talks are at an early stage, it cited sources as saying.

The Times said Gibbs was planning to help set up President Obama’s re-election campaign before taking a private sector job, but Facebook is pressing him to consider the job more quickly.

Gibbs’ hiring would also move the former press secretary far from the White House as well as Obama’s re-election headquarters in Chicago. The company’s headquarters is located in Palo Alto, Calif.

Details of his possible pay package have not been discussed, but the paper said he would receive a cash salary and company shares ahead of the IPO, which could be the largest in history given that Facebook has recently been valued at as much as $65 billion.

Websites like Groupon and Living Social have exploded onto the scene in recent years. They help businesses raise their profiles through discount offers. Now, Facebook will soon start testing its own service in several U.S. cities: Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, San Francisco and San Diego.

The company already offers Facebook Deals through Facebook Places, its check-in service. Its new daily deal service will work with Deals, though it will be very hard for Facebook to steal first place from market leader Groupon. Still, whenever the social network enters a new market, it has one huge advantage: 600 million users and counting.

Daily-deal services supposedly account for a third of all the ads on Facebook. Clearly the social network wants to take down the competition, but it wants to make sure its generating that extra revenue before it does.

“Local businesses will be able to sign up to use this feature soon and people will be able to find deals in the coming weeks,” the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said in statement today.

Facebook hopes to avoid pitfalls, such as those Groupon encountered when some small businesses were so overwhelmed by customer responses they could not keep up and ultimately suffered losses.

Facebook plans to sell the deals through its own sales team, as well as working with partners such as Gilt City, Home Run, Pop Sugar City, Tippr, KGB Deals, Plum District, Reach Local, Zozi, and Open Table.

With more than 600 million users, Facebook certainly has the critical mass and the social mojo to tap into the booming online deal market and compete with market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial. Facebook will showcase deals and encourage users to share those deals with friends. What’s going to lead to this program’s success is that users can “unlock” a deal and share that discount with friends. Facebook testing showed that people were more likely to buy a deal if one of their friends bought it first. It makes perfect sense: Getting that great deal on dinner for one just isn’t as fun if you can’t share it with others.

Six of the founders and investors behind Facebook have landed in the annual list of world’s top billionaires compiled by Forbes. Four of the names are new to the roster.

Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg clocked in at No. 52 with an estimated worth of $13.5 billion, up from 212 and $4 billion in 2010.

Co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, the youngest billionaire on the Forbes list at 26 (Moskovitz is eight days younger then Zuckerberg), Eduardo Saverin, and investors Sean Parker and Russian Yuri Milner are new to the ranks. Rounding out Forbes’ “Facebook Six” is investor Peter Thiel, who has moved down to 833 from 828, despite increasing his wealth to $1.5 billion from $1.2 billion.

This year, there are 20 billionaires under age 40, up from just eight last year. Zuckerberg comes in as the second-youngest billionaire, worth $13.5 billion, nearly five times as much as Moskovitz.

Facebook, a private Silicon Valley company, recently rounded up $1.5 billion in financing led by Goldman Sachs and Milner’s Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, suggesting it could be worth $50 billion and setting off a feeding frenzy among investors.

Facebook has about 600 million users and is a threat to more established big Web businesses such as Google and Yahoo for users’ time and advertising dollars.

An Egyptian man named Jamal Ibrahim was feeling so thankful that Facebook created a medium for organizing the Egyptian demonstrations that ultimately played a part in President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation from the post he held for 30 years, he named his newborn daughter Facebook Jamal Ibrahim.

The news was published in Egypt’s Al-Ahram, a government-owned news outlet. According to the English translation, “The girl’s family, friends, and neighbors in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook. Baby Facebook received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name.”

Having dominated the landscape of social media as we know it, Facebook now gives you yet another way to keep in touch with all those friends of yours. A new messenger app is going to change the way we have been using VoIP services and could present the popular Skype with a competitor that it can’t defeat.

Facebook Messenger for iPhone was developed by Crisp App and is available in Apple’s App Store. For $2.99 you get a convenient way to voice chat with your Facebook friends on-the-go. Select a friend’s name from your contact list, tap the call button, and they’ll receive a link to complete the connection in their current Facebook tab. Once your friend clicks through, your VoIP chat session is ready to go.

It’s still early (the app was released on February 17th), but the reviews for this app have been very positive so far.

Facebook users are familiar with the popular option to proclaim their relationship status and freely change their personal information from “single,” “in a relationship,” “engaged,” “married” or the ever mysterious “it’s complicated.” Last week, Facebook also added two new options to its list of relationship statuses including “in a civil union” and “in a domestic partnership.”

Now there is an app for Facebook users who actually want keep tabs on their friend’s relationship statuses.

It’s called the “Breakup Notifier” and it allows you to go through your friends list and choose potential friends that you might be interested in. The app then puts your selected friends onto a list that notifies you if their relationship status ever changes.

In other words, if you are tired of hitting the refresh button desperately hoping that the object of your affection has suddenly become single, then you’ll love this: You will INSTANTLY be sent an email when the object of your desire changes their relationship status.

Dan Loewenherz, 24, the creator of “Breakup Notifier” and a developer based in Beverly Hills, Calif., said it took him just about four hours to build the application.

The tagline from the app’s Web site pretty much says it all: “You like someone. They’re in a relationship. Be the first to know when they’re out of it.”

The app had more than 100,000 users in under 24 hours, and now has more than 200,000 users.