Facebook becomes profitable. Mark Zuckerberg orders pizza to celebrate.
For the first time ever, Facebook is making money.
In a blog post by CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, the site generated more money than is spent last quarter, putting them half a year ahead of their own projections:
Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.
In the blog post, Zuckerberg also mentions that Facebook has passed the 300 million mark in terms of subscribers. That’s particularly significant, considering it was only back on July 15 2009 that Zuckerberg was talking about the 250 million subscriber milestone they had just reached.
Marketing Magazine injects some of its freshly-acquired Rogers-Media-jerk-tone into the announcement:
This does not mean that Facebook necessarily is profitable by the measurements used by most companies, though. Cash remaining after expenses could be swallowed by other costs like taxes, debt payments or accounting charges.
Zuckerberg also did not indicate whether Facebook is now moving closer to filing for an initial public offering.
Facebook has raised more than $600 million from investors since it was founded five years ago. Its most recent infusion came this spring from Russian Internet investor Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million in exchange for a 2% stake in the company, valuing Facebook at $10 billion.
So they’re making money, but they haven’t placed their orders for private jets just yet.
Still, for a company that gives its product away for free on the Internet to be worth $10b on paper is mind-boggling, and for it to be turning a profit, doubly so.
You can view Mark Zuckerberg’s facebook blog here.
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