Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world?

I highly doubt they can get near the top 10. They'd first have to battle their way past the heavy weight technology companies, then the banking giants, then Wal-Mart and finally the the ridiculously lucrative oil companies (source: <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2010/performers/companies/profits" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2010/perfor...</a>).<p>They have to figure out how to monetize a lot more $ per user to be very profitable in the long term.

Shorm-term, may be. Mid-term, may be. Long-term, I hope not.

Yes -- when a single organization owns the connections, interests and geographical data of 600 million people -- it's inevitable.<p>No other entity has amassed this amount of data before.

No.

It is unlikely they will ever get close to energy (oil) companies. and by the way they need to IPO so that we can know what their revenue and expenses are.

One of the most profitable, perhaps...but I predict that if Dropbox stays independent - it will easily become the most profitable.

if their ARPU has as much potential for growth as mentioned in the first comment of the conversation, they could easily surpass Google.