Ask HN: Facebook is making profit? Please help me here.

[koski]

You are smarter than me. Please help me here. I'm getting insane.

I read in many posts that "Facebook is making profit".

Where could I find at least a link to read 'reliable' information about this Facebook's profit?

Or does someone know at least how much profit they actually do? (And if you do, from where did you get this info?)

[byoung2]

A quick googling will yield plenty of articles that say that Facebook is profitable, from reliable news sources like Reuters and Techcrunch, but these all cite "inside sources" so we can't be sure. The problem with privately held companies is that they don't have an obligation to report their financial like publicly traded companies do. These sources could be guessing or exaggerating.

[koski → byoung2]

Yes. "A quick googling will yield plenty of articles that say that Facebook is profitable".

But sadly this sounds to me the same as "most of the oil in the Caribbean just disappeared". Also "Beer is good" and "Angelina Jolie is beautiful" can be read in many web pages.

[byoung2 → koski]

That's exactly my point...you'll find plenty of articles that say Facebook is profitable, but you'll notice that all of these articles quote "inside sources" so you can't be sure where their info is coming from or whether it is reliable.

I remember lots of stories about how profitable Demand Media was, even quoting the CEO saying it, but when they filed papers in preparation for an IPO, the profits were nowhere to be found.

[minalecs → byoung2]

as the first commenter posted, you won't find anything reliable as its better for them if they don't disclose their real numbers.