Investors soon will be able to own shares of Facebook stock. The world’s biggest social media network presented documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The documents are required before the company can make its initial public offering（首次公开募股）or IPO. A date for the stock sale has yet to be announced. Experts say Facebook could raise about five billion dollars. That would be one of the biggest IPO sales ever. And it would be much bigger than Google’s first public stock sale in 2004. At that time, the Internet search company raised almost two billion dollars. Facebook has 800 million users around the world. It is the second most visited website after Google. Now, experts say the social media network is in a position to become one of the most valuable Internet companies. Stock expert Anupam Palit at Greencrest Capital says that among social media sites, Facebook is in a class by itself. “It is the biggest company in this space and we believe what makes it very unique from every other company that went public last year in this space is that it is very, very profitable.” said Anupam Palit. Early estimates place the total value of the social network between 75 and 100 billion dollars. That includes earlier investments by other companies. David Kirkpatrick wrote the book The Facebook Effect. He says Facebook’s IPO will be historic. The stock sale could also make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the world’s youngest billionaires. He is only 27. Investment companies are likely to buy Facebook stock first. But investment manager Jim O’Shaugnessy says that is not so bad. He says the prices of some IPO stocks are too high and fall not long after they first go on sale. Recently, share prices of some Internet businesses have fallen after their stocks were first offered. For example, stocks of Linkedln, Groupon and Zynga, dropped in price by as much as 25% after going public. There were similar questions eight years ago when Google first sold stock to the public. Today, Google is one of the world’s most valuable technology companies. 小题1:Which of the following is true about Google?
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