STATUS UPDATE

No Facebook IPO Till 2012

Zuckerberg wants more time to grow empire.

Facebook’s much-anticipated initial public offering is at least another year away. The company was believed to be preparing to go public sometime in 2011, but chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appears to have changed course and decided to take an extra year to grow the company. In that time, Facebook, which is currently valued at $24.9 billion and has 500 million users, is hoping to double its annual sales to around $1.4 billion. The extra year would also give Zuckerberg a chance to pick up the necessary skills to run a public company. “The burden of being public has never been greater,” said one technology analyst. “Zuckerberg doesn’t have to put his name at the bottom of four 10-Q statements every year and attest that everything in there is true or else he’s responsible. The minute it’s public, he does.”