Everyone knows that Facebook is really a pretty big deal. But if you’re sitting there wondering why everyone is going to crazy about their upcoming IPO and why it matters so much that they’re finally going public, then some of the stats that they released as part of that IPO might help you to understand the reasons why.

As you probably know Facebook was created in 2004. Although it didn’t make revenue initially, once it started there was no stopping it. In 2009 it made $777 million – which is no small sum. However that is completely dwarfed by the fact that 2 years later in 2011 Facebook made $3.7 billion.

Yes, in two years it managed to raise its revenue about $3 billion.

In terms of earnings, it grew from $122 million in 2009 to $668 million in 2011. Once again that is almost 6 times the amount and is an increase that is nothing less than jaw-dropping.

Many people have theorized that although Facebook is a gigantic company with massive amounts of users at some point or other it is going to slow down. Unfortunately Facebook has regularly defied such predictions and the latest set of data shows that from having 608 million users in 2009 it went to 840 million at the same point of time in 2011.

By this summer it should exceed the 1 billion mark.

So with upwards of 845 million users, there are an average of 2.7 billion ‘likes’ on a daily basis, and 483 million of those users log on every day. Think about that – over 50% of their users are logging on each and every day and actually actively using Facebook.

About 44% of its revenue comes from outside the US, with foreign advertisers forming the bulk of that, and 30% of the sales from its game makers and applications go directly to its pockets.

In short, Facebook shows no signs of slowing down or even waiting for others to catch up. It has gone from being a fairly simple social network, to being the dominant social network on the planet, to being synonymous with the very word ‘social network’. Similarly it has reinvented the way we look at online games, and the experience that most of us expect out of a social network.

When it does finally go public, Facebook expects to hit $5 billion in cash raised. Judging from these statistics it shouldn’t be a surprise if it manages just that. Who knows – it might even go much higher than that, but it really does depend on a lot of different factors.

As you should now see, the scope and stats speak for themselves.

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