The social networking company Facebook is poised to go public on May 17 after filing its initial public offering (IPO) documents at the start of February 2012, according to reports.

Technology site TechCrunch cites several sources close to the company who have revealed the target date.

Facebook has declined comment.

The company hopes that the much awaited initial public offering will raise about USD 10 B and value the company at more than USD 100 B, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Facebook offering of USD 10 B would be the largest IPO by any technology or Internet company.

In a letter accompanying the SEC filings, he claimed that, like the printing press or the television, Facebook has the power to lead a "complete transformation of many important parts of society".

"They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together. Today, our society has reached another tipping point," he wrote.

He stressed Facebook's mission has more social than about making money.

"Facebook was not originally founded to be a company," he said. "Simply put: we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services."

Companies often explore an IPO once they have USD 100 M  in revenue. Facebook is expected to debut with more than USD 4 B in revenue.

The Facebook IPO has been long awaited since the hugely successful offering from online professional networking site Linkedln Corp. in Ma, which set the beginning of a new era of internet and social media companies floating on the stock market.

Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, along with Harvard mates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. It soon reached one million users by December 2004, 100 million users in August 2008 and 500 million users by July 2010.

It now counts 800 million users, while 4 billion items are shared per day.

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