Facebook Stock Offer Rumors Renewed

The Internet on Monday buzzed anew with talk that Facebook is poised to go public after the Wall Street Journal reported the social networking giant could issue stock as early as April.

"We are not going to participate in speculation about an IPO," Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said in response to an AFP inquiry.

The Journal cited unnamed sources as saying that Facebook executives were discussing the potential of an initial public offering (IPO) of stock some time between April and June of next year.

Early this month Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during an interview on Charlie Rose's PBS television program that the company will have an IPO at some point but was in no hurry.

"Honestly, it's not something I spend a lot of time on a day-to-day basis thinking about now," he said during the November 7 interview.

"A big part of being a technology company is getting the best engineers and designers and talented people around the world," he said. "And one of the ways that you can do that is you compensate people with equity or options.

"At some point we're going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way," he said. "Now, the promise isn't that we're going to do it on any kind of short-term time horizon."