I am never an avid user of Facebook. My joining Facebook is just to view the pictures we had when we went for a group outing with friends in Subic. And recently I just maintained it so I can get connected with relatives and friends who live outside of the country and in the provinces where we get to see our pictures from way back when our waists are just size 20 and some of us are still in miniskirts. This was fun but aside from that there is really no time to visit Facebook what with most of my hours spent at work and I can even hardly open all the inbox messages in my email.

I am also a very private person and except for the columns I maintained for two newspapers I would rather remain incognito than being easily searched in the web. That is how paranoid I am in opening my personal information details to the public.

But I must admit that Facebook has become a necessary angel or devil? Every Tom, Dick & Harry has a Facebook nowadays from the youngest to the oldest. This is the fastest way to connect and update friends and relatives of the happenings in their lives. But while this is the biggest benefit – some users may use this to spy on other people’s lives. And privacy maybe a thing of the past which can be anticipated unless the privacy settings can be further improved to prevent hackers from getting into the users’ sites.

Nevertheless, in a recent article in Fortune magazine dated August 20, 2010 entitled “The Case for a $50 Billion Facebook” the company had eclipsed the 500 million subscribers earlier this summer. Investors are now watching this networking site for a possible IPO which is more likely to happen what with the popularity of the site which is poised to surpass that of Google. In July 2010 for instance, while Google had 3.161 billion visits Facebook had 3.152 billion visits according to the same article in Fortune (source: compete.com).

And while it has an anemic revenue growth per user which is $2.60 per user on an annual basis compared to $18 per user of Google and $12 per user of AOL (according to Second Shares), this will not be a hindrance for the company to go into IPO as this is also experienced by other Internet-based companies like Google before they went into IPO. The speculation is that the company might go into IPO by 2012 although the company declines to go into details.

Facebook is now being eyed by big multinational companies for big brand advertising and this is the way to go for Facebook to improve its revenue since it ad platform is more of self-serve.

When companies start to promote their own brands in the site, it looks that in the future Facebook will no longer just be a social networking site but a business networking site as well. Hopefully, by that time the advantages will far exceed the disadvantages.

Facebook could also possibly evolve from just a personal necessity to a business option as well for companies to promote their products and services. While most companies nowadays control the visit to this site by their employees, the time will come when businessess can update the stakeholders of their activities through Facebook, use the site to update everybody about the company’s activities and employees can now freely access the site while observing company’s policy on its use for by then it will become more of a business necessity rather than just a personal necessity.

The world is indeed being changed by this networking site which started small but is growing to be a Goliath in the industry. So much more is in store for Facebook in terms of the business opportunity it has and I hope here in the Philippines, we could get to buy even just a small number of shares when the company indeed goes into an IPO.

Estimated valuation for Facebook is around $50 billion even it does not improve its revenue per user in the coming years. If they are able to reach 500 million users last summer, it is possible they can reach the 600 to 700 million users in 2011 which is estimated to bring in approximately $1.8 billion in revenue in 2011 according to Fortune magazine. With such number of users-based, it certainly would be an attractive stock to buy if it goes public. And analysts are seeing a rally which is not happening for so long since Google’s IPO. I missed Google’s IPO just like most of us here in the Philippines but I hope we would not miss this one.

(Wilma Miranda is the Chairman of FINEX Publications Committee – for comments please email her at Wilma_517@yahoo.com)