More from Good Morning Silicon Valley.

Here’s a somewhat clearer look at how much money Facebook is making, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites a 100-page document given to potential investors by Goldman Sachs: For the first nine months of 2010, the Palo Alto company’s revenue was $1.2 billion, its profit $355 million. And by the way, the same document shows that because it expects to surpass the legal threshold for number of private investors, Facebook will either have to go public or disclose financial information by April 2012, which excites Silicon Valley and others who have been waiting for the lackluster IPO market to make a triumphant return. The New York Times’ DealBook likens the interest surrounding the possible IPOs of Facebook and other social networking companies such as Twitter and Zynga to the dot-com boom of the 1990s.

This corrects a misapprehension of mine. I had thought that if a company went over 499 shareholders, then SEC rules would oblige it to float. But that’s not the case. It either has to float, or publish more detailed financial information.