Firsthand Technology Value Fund has bought 330,000 more shares of Facebook (News - Alert), Inc. – ahead of the company’s highly anticipated IPO. The fund recently completed the purchase of the Facebook shares.

It now owns 530,000 shares of Facebook, which goes public later this year, according to a Firsthand press release. Firsthand Technology Value Fund is a venture capital fund investing in technology and clean technology companies.

Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Facebook was “already trading like a public company as insiders and wealthy investors use private marketplaces to buy and sell stock in the social-networking company ahead of its initial offering.” As of the middle of February, Facebook had over 1,000 shareholders – a very large number of investors for a company which is not publicly traded. According to rules set up by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, investors who have a net worth of at least $1 million and more than $200,000 a year in salary can buy stock via private marketplaces, Bloomberg (News - Alert) reported.

Facebook is reported to have a value over $100 billion. The company is expected to raise somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion from the initial public offering, according to news reports cited by TechZone 360. The value of Facebook is predicted to be between $75 billion and $100 billion through the IPO, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Facebook is a blue-chip stock and it’s not even public yet,” Kevin Landis, portfolio manager for the Firsthand Technology Value Fund, told Bloomberg last month.

In a related matter, Facebook’s sales jumped 88 percent to $3.71 billion during 2011, according to Bloomberg, with one estimate saying they could reach $6.1 billion in 2012 – data from EMarketer Inc. estimated.

Social media startups have been the subject of interest by many investors.