I think Facebook wants to go public. I'm not convinced it'll be good for them. Until they figure out the social networking business model, they're going to be a lot safer being acquired. Too bad their price is too high for anyone but the big boys to consider.
The international markets Facebook isn't in are already being won by other sites. See Bebo in the UK and Orkut in Brazil and India, to start. If anything, their lack of expansion should be a con, not a pro.
Older users still understand that Facebook is for fun, and LinkedIn might actually be useful in getting jobs and making business connections. Anyone dumb enough to mix business and pleasure is bound to regret it later.
The user base is growing fast, I'll grant you that. I mean, still not as fast as Myspace, but that's beside the point. The real question is, is their revenue growing that fast? And can they sustain those growth rates as they reach saturation in the college market? It's pretty much their only demographic. I'll admit, though, I haven't seen the numbers re: the falloff after graduation.
The company is hiring like crazy, as far as I can tell. I personally think 85 developers is a lot. I'm not really sure why the dev count matters, though.
I can't really comment on CPM numbers, but it's clear to me that Facebook could be making a ton more money, given the value and size of their audience, as everyone claims it. They've claimed page views on the order of Google (alexa says Google's only twice as big). But their profits are 100 times smaller, by most estimates.
I also think the $2 bill ask was real, and that the independence line is totally new. Why didn't we hear it last year?