Facebook Files for IPO; Now Has 845 Million Users Across the Globe

Finally, the curtain is raised, Facebook, today announced that it may file its S-1, The social networking company filed its papers for the IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission late today.

In its filing, Facebook said that it is looking to raise about $5 billion when its IPO launches. There had been some rumors that the company was looking to raise $10 billion.

Facebook expects it will begin trading its stock sometime in the second quarter of 2012. The likely month for the stock launch could be May. Facebook will have "FB" as its trading symbol but did not name which stock exchange it will use.

Facebook claims to have $3.7 billion in annual revenue with $1.8 billion in operating income per year and a whopping $1 billion in annual net income.

In the papers filed today, the company also revealed it has "845 million users worldwide today." Adding, the company said that it has "483 million users who check out Facebook every day."

Pew Internet last summer reported that 92 percent of social network users are on Facebook -- just 17 percent on Twitter.

In a data on Facebook penetration across the globe released today, comScore said:

"Globally, Facebook reached 12 percent of the internet audience in December 2007 and as of December 2011 the social network reached over half of the internet audience, 55 percent (43 percentage point rise)", according to comScore.

Reach is greatest in Latin America (84.1 percent), followed by North America (82.9 percent). For more, see the chart below: