Where’s The Love for Facebook/Elevation Partners Deal?

In any other given week, the fact that Elevation Partners this week bought $120 million of shares in Facebook, essentially valuing the social networking company at $23 billion, would be topic No. 1 on the Twittersphere and here at peHUB.

But Tesla drove forth its IPO, and Foursquare finally located that Series B funding it was looking for.

Nevertheless, Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic covered the Facebook/Elevation deal earlier today, which you can read here. His story discusses the firm’s previous investment in Facebook, which is also backed by Digital Sky Technologies, Microsoft and Accel Partners, among others. Also, Sarah Lacy wrote about the deal in TechCrunch.

No doubt, the investment has garnered attention because of the eye-grabbing nature of Facebook, but peHUB readers shouldn’t overlook the fact that this is a big deal for Elevation Partners. Just two months ago, Elevation Partners managed to earn a small return on its investment in Palm Inc., which Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy for $1.2 billion.

That sale, while not a home run, was a good base hit for Elevation Partners, which had invested more than 25% of its $1.8 billion debut fund into the developer of smartphone technology.

Elevation, in fact, has been active lately, having done a deal late last month when Forbes Media, a business publisher that is in the firm’s portfolio, made an add-on acquisition through the purchase of True/Slant, a news-oriented blogging site.

Elevation is widely expected to raise a second fund later this year. So It will be interesting to see how its Forbes Media add-on and upping its stake in Facebook will help in that fund-raising endeavor.