INVESTORS came down with Facebook fever after the social networking titan filed to go public and seek to raise $5 billion in the largest flotation ever by an Internet company on Wall Street.

The paperwork filed on Wednesday for the initial public offering provided the first glimpse of the financial details of the Web giant launched eight years ago by Mark Zuckerberg from his Harvard University dorm room.

Zuckerberg, who was just 19 when he founded the network, penned a letter to investors outlining what he said were the core values of Facebook and said it "was not originally created to be a company.

"It was built to accomplish a social mission to make the world more open and connected," the Facebook chief executive said in the letter accompanying the filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. "There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future."

Facebook said it will list on Wall Street as "FB". AFP