Once Facebook Inc. becomes a public company, and if its shares are listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange with an estimated market capitalization of $100 million, it would immediately rank ahead of Amazon.com Inc., which has a market cap of $87 billion.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch, if Facebook shares list on the NASDAQ exchange and if its market cap is initially $100 billion, Facebook would become the eighth-largest company on the exchange, ranked by market cap. Apple Inc. leads the NASDAQ exchange with a market cap of $467 billion, followed by Microsoft Corp. at $257 billion.

Forecasts for Facebook's IPO value have ranged, with the lower end near $75 million, according to the Journal's piece.

Facebook's business model – and that model's stability going forward – have been questioned by some analysts in the runup to its IPO. As reported recently by TechFlash, 12 percent of Facebook's revenue base comes from Farmville game developer Zynga, a San Francisco-based company that made a splash when it opened an office in Pioneer Square last year.