(CNN) -- We all knew he'd eventually get around to it: Mark Zuckerberg is expected to finally bring Facebook public. The company is reported to be preparing to file for an IPO -- initial public offering -- through which anyone will be able to buy shares of the social networking company on an open stock exchange. As a media theorist, I used to ignore these business shenanigans. Who cares if these companies are private or public, profitable or in the red? How many non-Wall-Street-Journal readers even knew what an IPO was back before the Internet created the likes of AOL, Netscape, and Google?
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Douglas Rushkoff says Facebook's reported plan to go public makes some wonder about future
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He says it may seem company expanding influence, reaching into, rescuing economy
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But really it would be just giving into corporate capitalism, he says: Earnings trump big dreams
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Rushkoff: With IPO, Zuckerberg not so much revolutionizing reality as getting with program
Google
This new form of media -- social networking -- will not only redefine the Internet, change human relationships, create a new marketing landscape, and challenge @placeholder, but it will now rescue and alter the economy itself.
Facebook
Facebook
Facebook was taking so long to get to market that many people had begun selling their shares privately on what are known as secondary markets, putting @placeholder's valuation even further out of the company's own hands.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg
By all accounts, @placeholder was trying to delay this eventuality as long as possible.