Facebook revenues reach £1bn

Net income for the half of the year was almost $500m, according to Reuters. Facebook does not disclose financials and would not comment on the report.

In January this year, a leaked letter to potential investors from Mark Zuckerberg revealed Facebook had generated revenue of $1.2bn (£780m) and net income of $335m (£217m) in the first nine months of 2010.

The letter came one week after Facebook received a $500m investment from Goldman Sachs and Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies, which at the time led to Facebook being valued at $50bn.

The investment fuelled speculation that Facebook would go public next year.

Facebook is facing heightened competition from Google, which recently launched its own social networking service Google+.

In its most recent financial results Google reported record quarterly revenues of $9bn, after growing nearly a third over a year.

Facebook has been widely tipped to announce a music service next week at its f8 developer's conference, with Spotify as one of the launch partners.

This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk