Facebook Made a (Nontheoretical!) $2 Billion in Sales in 2010

While Facebook remains private, its soaring theoretical valuation (last seen teetering at $50 billion) is based on how investors are trading shares on the secondary market. But the virtual social network did exceedingly well in real-world terms in 2010, raking in about $2 billion in sales from advertisers, well past the projected revenue of $1.5 billion and more than double the $800 million or so it made last year. Is the fact that insiders leaked these numbers an amuse-bouche for an impending public offering? Or was Mark Zuckerberg sick of everyone saying Julian Assange should’ve won Time magazine’s Person of the Year? [Bloomberg]