The news of Facebook issuing stock options has been widely known for sometime and their plans to raise $5B in first public offerings.

According to many news sources Facebook public offerings will start from May 17th 2012 at $35 a share (Nasdaq: FB). All dates and pricing above are all based on multiple news reports, these are subject to change.

Like any public offerings you take some sort of risk but will Facebook be a bigger risk to investors than normal? Facebook has always hit a backlash from a percentage of their users because of changes they make and a tiny percentage of users stop using their service and move to rival social networking sites.

Since Facebook launched in February 2004 they have always stated their service will be free but will this change in months ahead as the public offerings go ahead? The whole rumour of Facebook becoming a paid for has been rumoured for sometime by thousands of users but thus Facebook have yet to put anything like this in place.

If Facebook was to become a paid for service there could be a couple of issues that arise from this, one users will not pay for social networking and two will Facebook remove ads if you pay a subscription fee.

Facebook are like any company, they are trying to offer the best service possible with a minimal impact to their large user base and sometimes the options some people would like to see wont always be realistic for the company to stay profitable.

Needless to say if the offerings pay off in the long run Facebook will have a brighter future. Always remember when buying any stock options you are taking a risk, always do research before investing because you might lose money instead of gaining.