Here's a snap judgement of Facebook's business after a quick first look at the IPO. Check back tomorrow for more in depth analysis. 

Facebook's growth is slowing.

It grew 154% between 2009 and 2010 and 88% between 2010 and 2011.

The ad business grew even slower between 2010 and 2011 – just 69%.

Google's ad business grew 92% between its year six and year seven. And that's when there was much less ad spending on the Internet.

The dissapointing ad revenue growth comes despite Facebook selling 42% more ads in 2011, and increasing their average price 18%.

That's not quick enough growth for Facebook to justify the $100 billion valuation that's being bandied about.

The most exciting part of Facebook business is actually payments – the way it makes money off of games like FarmVille. That business grew from $100 million in 2010 to $500 million in 2011. 500%!

Even still, rather than its current business models, the reason Facebook might actually be worth that $100 billion is the stunning amount of attention it gets from people in the world.

840 million people go to the site every month; 480 million go every day. 425 million people use Facebook on their phones.

That attention gives Facebook the chance to get into new businesses like games, which it started years after getting into advertising.

IF Facebook is a good bet a $75 billion or $100 billion it is because Facebook will not only be able to grow its current businesses – it will be able to leverage all that attention it gets from users and create new businesses, just the way it created the payments business out of nothing a couple years ago.

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See Also:

• Here's One Of The First News Articles Ever Written About Facebook
• FACEBOOK'S IPO FILING IS HERE
• MARK ZUCKERBERG IS WORTH ~$25 BILLION