A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates Facebook may be filing for IPO sometime next week possibly as early as Wednesday. The social networking company may reportedly be selecting Morgan Stanley as the underwriter for the offering. The competition to be in underwriter position has been a Wall Street story for some time.

Apparently the Wednesday timeline is still being discussed. With its 800 million+ user base, the high profile company is primed to make a significant splash in the financial market. Some analysts have indicated the action could raise $10 billion dollars.

The news of the offering would be the latest and perhaps most anticipated IPO’s that are in this latest generation of internet companies. Companies such as Groupon, LinkedIn and Zynga are notable recent companies that have filed IPO’s with much attention and success.

It is not unreasonable to think we may be looking a new boom in IPOs for other new companies that tie into social media in many interesting ways.  One company that comes to mind is ThisMoment.com  which powers things like Mitt Romney fan page and other fan pages for the biggest brand marketers.  As in the case of recent prior IPO companies, its service utilizes social media to drive sales and attention.  The power of social media is being leveraged around these powerhouse social media sites, where the influence and viral nature has immersed itself into every channel available. The future of advertising will be the ability to drive transactions in social channels.

The size of the Facebook IPO may be the largest in several years.

The largest global technology IPO on record was a $5.9 billion offer in 2000 by Infineon Technologies AG, the former semiconductor unit of Siemens AG, Dealogic said.

An anticipated cash raise of $10 billion would certainly surpass this.  This may be a new dawn of a technology speculation era.