Facebook floats on stock market May 17, will be valued $100B

Facebook, the world's largest social network, is expected to go public on May 17. The online giant is expected to be valued at $100 billion. Analysts say that Facebook's is the most anticipated stock offering from Silicon Valley since Google in 2004.

The May 17 date, according to TechCrunch, is subject to SEC approval of relevant paperwork, including those relating to recently purchased Instagram. TechCruch reports Facebook is expected to raise $10 billion from its initial public offering of shares, though it may be a smaller sum. But the IPO will also depend on approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Examiner reports that Facebook valuation reflects current levels of trading in the secondary market and also matches a report on how Facebook won over Instagram. The flotation will make Facebook among the largest public companies in the world with companies like McDonald's, Amazon.com and Visa. According to a sources, “Investors want as high a price as possible so that the secondary market won’t look like a problem." TechCrunch reports that "with 2.51 billion fully-diluted shares outstanding, the valuation desired would price the company at around $40 a share." According to Daily Mail, the world's largest social network had very humble beginnings. It began as a dorm room project for a Harvard dropout, Mark Zuckerberg, but has since grown and reached the top in less than a decade. According to Facebook's preliminary filing, the company's net income rose 65 percent to $1 billion in 2011, with a revenue of $3.7 billion. Valued at $100 billion, double the value of Hewlett-Packard, Facebook's IPO will be bigger than that of any dot-com company expecting to go public, Daily Mail reports.