Facebook sure has put on a lot of weight this summer. Over
the past two months alone, the social-networking site has
packed on another 50 million registered users.
Yes, Facebook is taking over the world.
It was mid-July when the company was celebrating a new
milestone: A whopping
250 million users. Yesterday it announced that it passed
the 300 million mark. Summer may be the seasonally sleepy
chunk of the cyberspace calendar, but it's hard to keep a
viral trend down.
The real nugget in Mark Zuckerberg's mile-marker
announcement is that Facebook is now taking in more money
than it's spending.
"Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow
positive sometime in 2010, and I'm pleased to share that we
achieved this milestone last quarter," he writes. "This is
important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong
independent service for the long term."
Did you catch that? Zuckerberg's blog entry is intended
for "fans" of the site. How many do you think grasp the
concept of
cash flow? Not many, one would think. This feels more
like it's either telegraphing an IPO to prospective
underwriters. If not, then Facebook is ringing the dinner
bell for
Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO),
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), or any potential
buyer.
One can argue that Zuckerberg is too proud to cash out. He
also told Reuters that any potential IPO is still a few years
away. Then again, he said that back in May -- Facebook was
just a
200-million memberbaby at the time. We still didn't know
if the market rally was sustainable.
Facebook would be doing Wall Street a favor by going
public now, giving it a sexy name to chew on. Continued... |