On Wednesday, Facebook filed S-1 documents disclosing the company's plan to seek $5 billion ahead of an initial public offering, which could place the company's value as high as $100 billion.
The filing was chockfull of previously unknown details about Facebook's finances. For example, we now know that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a private plane at his disposal and spends almost $100,000 per year on estate and financial planning.
But that's far from all! The massive document contains a trove of details that will delight stat-seekers for hours.
Read on for a roundup of the best writing with the most interesting tidbits from Facebook's S-1.
Quora: What Are The Most Notable Aspects Of Facebook's S-1?
According to Quora user Justin Stone, one of the most notable aspects of the S-1 filing is the notably low base salaries for Facebook executives. He also points out that Google is mentioned seven times more than Twitter in Facebook's S-1, and he notes that only a few of Facebook execs' family members have been employed at Facebook.
Writes Stone:
Randi Zuckerberg's compensation was required to be disclosed, and so too the daughter of board member Don Graham. No other immediate family members of executives/directors are or have been employed there.
The New York Times: From Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches
The Times reveals that Facebook's IPO will make one artist very rich:
The graffiti artist who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social networks first headquarters made a smart bet. The shares owned by the artist, David Choe, are expected to be worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly later this year.
AboveTheCrowd.com: Why Facebook Clearly Belongs In The 10X Revenue Club
Bill Gurley shows why Facebook is a shoe-in for the exclusive "10X Revenue Club" and warms hearts by revealing that Facebook doesn't try to dodge its full tax burden.
"Warren Buffet's secretary would be happy," Gurley writes, "Facebook's tax rate is already north of 40%. Other multi-national companies typically have found a way to reduce this. Facebook is paying full-boat."
Forbes enlisted speech decoder James Pennebaker to analyze the word choices in Zuckerberg's 45-paragraph letter to investors. From Pennebaker's breakdown of the letter:
Zuckerberg's word use "suggests someone who is driven by very high rates of need for achievement" but low rates for building wealth or social affiliation, Pennebaker concludes. "Most of the Zuckerberg letter is emotionally distant," the researcher adds. "There are very few personal pronouns (which typically signal an emotional cognition to other humans) and virtually no I-words except for a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the letter." Emotive words such as "happy" or "sad" are rare, too.
The Huffington Post: Facebook Investors: Who's Making Mint Off Facebook IPO
The Huffington Post writes that COO Sheryl Sandberg was the most highly compensated Facebook executive in 2011 and reveals that the "world's youngest billionaire," Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, owns 7.6 percent of the company.
Wired's Tim Carmody predicts what Facebook will do with its cash and gets to the heart of why Zuck may have founded Facebook.
"I think that if theres anything Zucks truly passionate about, it's this: that there's something broken about how we hide and mask ourselves with other people, and that our lives would be better if we were more open," Carmody writes. "He's had to learn over time how quickly to accelerate those principles and give people time to adjust."
Want to see the 9 biggest threats to Facebook's success as outlined in its S-1 filing? Check out the slideshow below.
