Facebook is weighing plans to let employees sell up to $1bn (£621m) of their shares to outside investors. The sale would value the social network at about $60bn, according to an influential industry blog.
Major investors have been clamouring to invest in privately-held Facebook. The sale would allow Facebook employees to raise money on their stakes in the company while the firm considers selling shares in an initial public offering (IPO), the All Things Digital blog said, citing Facebook sources.
At $60bn Facebook would become one of the world's most valuable companies, worth as much as Ford Motor Company. The new valuation marks yet another jump in valuation, coming just a month after company founder Mark Zuckerberg raised $1.5bn in financing in a deal that valued Facebook at $50bn.
In the interim period social media firms have been attracting ever increasing attention. Goldman Sachs led the last round of financing for Facebook and had planned to offer shares to its top tier US clients. Those plans had to be scrapped when the bank was inundated with requests for shares and the publicity over the share sale threatened to breach rules about private placements.
Zuckerberg, who started the firm in a Harvard dorm room, owns about a quarter of the company, making his stake worth $15bn. In December he joined fellow billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in The Giving Pledge, a network of super-rich people who have promised to give most of their fortunes to charity.
The news of Facebook's potentiall share sale follows revelations that Facebook and Google are both stalking Twitter, the micro-blogging site. The price for the fast growing but still loss-making firm is said to be between $8bn and $10bn. Alongside Facebook and Twitter's valuations, social media firms including Groupon and LinkedIn are planning to raise billions in IPOs.
Zuckerberg, who started the firm in a Harvard dorm room, is expected to lead the biggest social media IPO when he takes Facebook public in 2012. The company now has over 600 million members worldwide and has become the hottest investment property on the planet. Last year it eclipsed Google as the world's most visited website. According to Experian Hitwise, 8.9% of unique online visits were to Facebook last year, compared with Google's 7.2%. A survey by Nielsen found that Americans spend nearly 23% of their time online using social networks, up from about 16% in 2009.
Under US rules a private company with 500-plus shareholders must either go public or start publishing full accounts. Facebook has been keen to keep rivals from looking over its books and Zuckerberg has carefully managed those numbers up until now. The firm recently said it would publish financial results by April 2012 even if it hasn't held an IPO, according to a document sent to prospective investors.
Employees were given the opportunity to sell shares in 2009 to one of Facebook's investors, Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies (DST). Current and former employees were able to sell up to 20% of their common shares at $14.77 per share at a $6.5bn valuation. If the latest deal goes through, those who sell their shares this time will get almost 10 times that amount.
The prices have led some to claim a new dotcom bubble has been formed and is about to pop. Colin Gillis, internet analyst at BGC Partners, said: "I wouldn't say there was a bubble but there is certainly more confidence than scepticism about. It all depends on whether you think social media is going to be more or less important in the future. Personally I think it's going to be more important."
