10 Fast Facts About Facebook

We all knew the day was coming. Now it’s here.

Today, Facebook filed its intention to be traded on the public markets in an IPO that could value it at $100 billion.

Being the resident financial document nerd, I’ve pored through the filing to pull some fascinating Facebook facts. Here they are in all their glory. Oh, and you can read the filing yourself here.

Everyday We’re Facebookin’
We knew Facebook had a lot of users. The network has 845 million monthly active users. But how many people are using Facebook daily is staggering: 483 million daily users as of December 2011 – a 48% increase over the year before.

Social Has Gone Mobile
Facebook has gone deep into the mobile field. 425 million users took advantage of a Facebook mobile product in December. What’s intriguing about this is that Facebook doesn’t serve ads on its mobile platforms and says a mass of users abandoning desktop access for mobile access would be a risk factor for its business.

Billion Dollar Baby
Facebook may be young in years, but big in dollars. The company collected over $3.7 billion in revenue and pocketed $1 billion in profit. But Facebook expects its growth rates to drop off. Between 2009 and 20120 revenue grew 154% and grew 88% between 2010 and 2011.

Ads and the Need for Zynga
Yup. Facebook makes the majority of its money through ads. But interestingly the percentage ads represent dropped off this past year to 85%. (In 2009 it was 98% and 2010 it was 95%.) And maybe you thought Zynga was dependent on Facebook, but the relationship goes both ways. Turns out Zynga represented 12% of revenue last year.

The Costs
Sales and marketing expense was up 132% this year for Facebook, costing $427 million. Research and development rose 169% to $244 million.

Picture Perfect
Facebook is the most popular photo-sharing service out there. More than 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook per day. Think about that the next time you tag those wedding photos.

Turn the Page
Just how hard is it to create a standout Facebook page. Really, really hard. There are more than 37 million pages with ten or more “likes”.

PR Matters
If you think Facebook doesn’t care about the headlines, think again. The social network lists negative publicity as a risk factor and that bad press about its privacy practices, products, litigation and regulatory matters could have an “adverse effect on the size, engagement, and loyalty of our user base.”

Dreams of Brazil
Brazil represents the biggest growth region for Facebook with 37 million users at the end of 2011, an increase of 268% over the year before. Second is India with 46 million users, an increase of 132% over the prior year. The social network believes it has penetration rates of 80% of Internet users in countries like Chile, Turkey and Venezuela, and a 60% penetration rate in the UK and US. Facebook is available in 70 different languages. And its goal is nothing if not ambitious: “There are more than two billion global Internet users, according to an industry source, and we aim to connect all of them.”

The $1 CEO
No doubt, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg is going to reap billions from this IPO. But his salary is set to drop. Currently, he makes a base salary of $500,000 per year. But at his request his annual salary will be set to $1 as of January 1, 2013.

What do you think of the Facebook filing? Let us know in the comments section.