Almost eight years after he founded Facebook in a Harvard dorm room, Mark Zuckerberg finally confirmed on Wednesday that the company has decided to join the US stock exchange.

The deal could value Facebook at approximately $100 billion, with Zuckerbergs's stake in the firm standing at $28 billion. Facebook's initial public offering will emerge as the biggest IPO filed by a technology company since Google went public back in 2004. Meanwhile, experts are of the opinion that the IPO is likely to emerge as a defining moment, not just for Facebook itself, but for the entire social networking world.

"We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits," Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to potential shareholders, reports the Guardian.

According to further reports, about 1000 present and past Facebook employees are likely to become  paper millionaires once the company goes public.

"Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected," Zuckerberg added in the letter.