Fuelled by advertising and other revenue streams, Facebook has become "free cash flow positive" and by the end of the year its overall revenue is likely to be above $550 million (Dh2.08 billion), say industry estimates.

Last year the company brought in between $280m and $300m in revenue. Facebook plans to go beyond traditional social network banner advertising to grow revenue in the future.

Earlier in the year, the company said it saw 70 per cent revenue growth over the previous year.

Apparently, the company has been experimenting and developing new forms of ads that rely on user data and behaviour rather than the traditional impression-based model of most of the social network ads.

In the wake of this commercial stability encouraged by additional revenues from advertising, Facebook has established a dual-class stock structure to ensure voting control by existing owners, but has no plans to become a public company, it said.

"We did introduce a dual- class stock structure because existing shareholders wanted to maintain control over voting on certain issues to ensure the company continues to focus on the long-term agenda to build a great business," said Larry Yu, Facebook spokesman.

"Facebook has no plans to go public at this time," he said.

An analyst said he found the move unsurprising, because the social networking company has in some ways been modelling itself on Google, which long ago went to a dual-class structure.

"That is the exact thing Google did," said Ben Schachter of Broadpoint AmTech. "The structure is a way to protect longer-term interests against short-term pressures," he said.

Schachter said without a dual-class structure a majority of shareholders could force business decisions for short-term gains at the expense of the long-term success sought by the company's founders.

The social networking company, which has signed up more than 300 million users, has large investments from the Microsoft Corp and Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies (DST). Last month, DST began purchasing shares directly from Facebook's shareholders, two people familiar with the deal told Reuters at the time.

In July, DST bought $100m of Facebook shares from employees and ex-employees, at a $16.5bn valuation.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in May an IPO was "a few years out".

Nielsen also declared Facebook on the top of the social networking status announcing it was the number one online social networking and blog destination in October 2009, with 217.8 million video streams viewed during the month.

Myspace.com and Stickam were number two and number three, with 85.2 million and 26.3 million video streams, respectively.

Video viewing on Facebook continues to grow, reveal research figures. Last year, Facebook's online video viewing audience experienced tremendous growth. Year-over-year, total time spent viewing video on Facebook increased 1,840 per cent, from 34.9 million minutes in October 2008 to 677.0 million in October 2009.

The number of unique viewers of video increased 548 per cent and total streams grew 987 per cent during the same time period. (With inputs from agencies)

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