The progress of Facebook has today become a little clearer. The question on everyone’s mind is if Facebook plans to hold out and go for an IPO or succumb to the potentially enormous buy out offers that are surely close on their horizon.
Personally, I cannot see the likes of Google allowing Facebook to grow that much more before the big G-men step in and take over Facebook, ‘YouTube style’. However, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg and his team are enjoying a steady flow of significant offers from eager investors.
Companies such as Microsoft, Facebooks ad-serving partner, are keen to get a piece of Facebook and they are not the only big player with such intentions. Facebook’s last round of funding was in 2006 and totalled $25M, a figure that is sure to be surpassed if they chose to take the option of additional funding again.
Initial indications from reliable sources indicate that “There are several B’s involved in the discussions.†Original facebook investor Peter Thiel from Founders Fund has some grand ideas around the figure that would tickle facebook’s fancy:
“If we got an offer from someone for $10 billion, we probably would listen to them,†Thiel told the Deal in a recent interview. “I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit it.â€
Facebooks initial acquisition in the form of parakey in July this year indicated a strong desire by the start-up to recruit top level minds to help grow their 40 million strong online social network. Parakey was started by the original founders of Mozilla Firefox, Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt.
One thing is for sure, interesting times lie ahead for Facebook from a business perspective. They seem to be following a path based on lessons learnt from Google’s successful IPO strategy. This observation is supported by additional comments made by Thiel who inferred that a target for a public offering would be more in the vicinity of 2009 by which time facebook should have been able to build a stronger business.
I’m off now to talk to the bank manager about a facebook IPO savings scheme, target January 2009. Like many others, I missed the Google IPO. If history serves, no one wants to miss this one. 
