Eight years after Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, the 27-year-old on Wednesday announced he is selling shares in the social network at a price that values his creation at up to $100 billion – and values his stake in the business at $28 billion.

Facebook's initial public offering (IPO) will be the biggest technology IPO since Google's in 2004. There have been estimates that 1,000 current and former employees could become paper millionaires when the company goes public. The sale will be the defining moment – and the biggest test yet – for the new wave of social media firms now joining the U.S stock exchanges.

In a regulatory filing, the company gave the most detailed look yet at Facebook's business. Facebook had 845 million users at the end of December and 483 million people were using it every day. The company had revenues of $3.7 billion in 2011, up from $1.97 billion in 2010, and made a profit of $1 billion, up from $606 million in 2010.

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