FACEBOOK RAISES RUBLES

Call Mark Zuckerberg the $10 billion boy.

The baby-faced genius behind popular social-networking Web site Facebook raised an additional $200 million from a Russian investment firm that puts his company’s value at $10 billion.

That’s a $5 billion haircut from 18 months ago, prior to the recession, when software giant Microsoft bought a similar stake in the company for $240 million, suggesting Zuckerberg’s Internet phenomenon is losing steam.

The popular social-networking site yesterday said it sold a preferred 1.96 percent stake to Digital Sky Technologies, a Web firm run by businessman Yuri Milner. Digital Sky also plans to buy $100 million of common stock from Facebook employees looking to cash out their shares.

To be sure, the actual worth of Facebook has long been a moving target. Earlier this year, court papers that were accidentally released publicly revealed that Facebook may be worth between $3 billion and $4 billion. What’s more, chatter among various Silicon Valley venture-capital firms have pegged the range at between $3 billion and $5 billion.

Although the five-year-old company is growing rapidly and has more than 200 million users worldwide, it hasn’t settled on a business model. Facebook sells advertising but not enough to sustain its expanding user base.

“They’re taking their good old time to generate some revenues,” said Lauren Rich Fine, director of research for ContentNext Media. “At the same time, I think their costs are escalating rapidly.”

Investors have poured more than $400 million into Facebook, and there are signs that stakeholders and employees are eager for the company to start planning an initial public offering.

“It’s not something we’re rushing toward,” Zuckerberg said. “We don’t see it happening on the immediate horizon.

The deal with Digital Sky gives the privately held Facebook more breathing room. It also enables some employees to sell their option shares after the economic downturn quashed company efforts to fund an employee stock buyback plan last year.

In a conference call, Zuckerberg cautioned against comparing the Digital Sky investment with Microsoft’s. He stressed that the deal with Microsoft was part of a broader advertising partnership and was struck before the economy tanked.

“You have to look at the whole picture,” he said. “That was more of a strategic partnership with different components.”

In April, The Post reported that Facebook was trying to raise money and had been talking with several private-equity firms, but that the two sides were far apart on what the company was worth.

Around the same time, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg insisted publicly the company didn’t need to raise funds, although she didn’t rule it out.

Zuckerberg reiterated yesterday that the company didn’t need the cash infusion.

He said he still expects to increase revenue by 70 percent this year and that Facebook is on track to be cash-flow positive next year.