Facebook could file papers for an initial public offering (IPO) as early as Wednesday, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, the Journal said Facebook could be valued between $75 billion and $100 billion, with Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter.

This follows November reports that said Facebook wanted to raise $10 billion in an IPO for a valuation of $100 billion. The Journal said then that Facebook was "inching closer" to an IPO sometime between April and June, while Bloomberg speculated that it was going to happen before the end of 2011. At the time, PCMag learned from a well-placed source that it's been known "for months" that the social networking's initial public offering would be happening "soon," though the source wouldn't confirm a date.

During a November appearance on the Charlie Rose show, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the idea behind going public is to be able to give back to those who invested in the company and helped it grow with their engineering talent.

"One of the way you do that is to compensate people with equity and options," he said.

That compensation, however, is not happening overnight. Facebook will go public "when it makes sense," Zuckerberg said, but he declined to elaborate on what that meant. "It's honestly not something I spend time thinking about on a day-to-day basis," he said.

Several tech companies have gone public in recent months, including Zynga, Yelp, Groupon, and LinkedIn, but none have been as large and influential as Facebook.

Damon Poeter contributed to this report.