Facebook Revenue : doubles first-half revenue - source

San Francisco - Facebook's revenues doubled to $ 1.6 billion in the first half of 2011, a source familiar with their finances, said, underlining its appeal to advertisers, but handle with intensifying competition from the likes of Google income Inc.Net first half 2011 was almost $ 500 million According to the source, who requested anonymity because Facebook is a private publication of his results. 

Facebook's investors have had better results pushed its valuation at about $ 80 billion in private markets, which many industry observers expect the world's No. 1 Internet social network to go public 2012.Its growing in popularity among advertisers, and 750 million users, has been pressure on established Web companies like Yahoo Inc., which threw its CEO Carol Bartz said. "We see Facebook as being the operating system to provide advertisements on the Internet," said Dave Williams, CEO of Blinq Media, which runs campaigns for companies advertising on Facebook. 

Search leader Google Inc. launched Google +, a rival social networks in June, which attracted more than 10 million users in its first two weeks. Google has yet to offer ads on its social network, but it is trying to increase Google + 's appeal to consumers, and offers games such as Poker by Zynga pile and is angry Birds.Some venture capitalists and industry experts see the early signs that Google is going down + the right way to take a piece of Facebook. Facebook earned $ 355 million net profit for the nine months 2010 revenue of $ 1.2 billion, according to documents provided to clients of Goldman Sachs at the time of the offer to share the source would not provide figures for direct comparison of the first half of 2011 figures. 

Created by CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a Harvard dorm room in 2004, the company is expected this month as the new features and Rhapsody music service Spotify, according to people familiar with plans.Facebook has become one of the most visited web destinations, people who spend hours on the site each month, share photos and videos, and converse friends.Facebook up almost a third of all U.S. Internet display ad views in June to more than the total price for Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., according to analysis firm comScore. 

A large brand advertisers as well as local companies are increasingly spending more marketing dollars on Facebook, which has made its vast number of users and the ability to target consumers according to their interests, said Blinq Media Williams.Facebook 's social network where users and companies to confirm that the products' pages, provides a treasure trove of valuable information to other online services do not fit, he said. "Companies like Yahoo rely on third-party user behavior data on things like cookies. Facebook, which is data that users have shown," he said said.

Facebook's growing allure of marketing has helped raise prices on their ads. The price that companies pay for each customer who clicks on the Facebook advertising grew 62 percent between the fourth quarter 2010 and second quarter of 2011, according to Efficient Frontier, another firm that helps companies to serve advertising campaigns on Facebook. It was not clear what kind of Facebook for $ 1.6 billion in revenue came from advertising sales in the first half. Facebook can be a 30 percent reduction in sales of virtual goods, like cars or animals such as digital, which enhance the social experience of games such as Zynga's Facebook FarmVille.In January, said he raised $ 1.5 billion from investors like Goldman Sachs and the Digital Sky Technologies, as well as private services for foreign investors conducted by Goldman Sachs, is the assessment of about $ 50 billion.Facebook declined to comment on their financial results.