Leading up to Facebook’s first-ever earnings call as a publicly traded company, which will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT, the social network, through outside public-relations firm Brunswick Group, is trying to de-emphasize its actual financial results and focus on its accomplishments since going public May 18.

According to CNET, Facebook is looking to highlight:

• The settlement of the patent-infringement lawsuit filed by Yahoo in March.
• Staying on the topic of patents, its $550 million deal in April to acquire 650 former AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft.
• Its launch of app center in June, to help facilitate discovery of mobile Facebook applications for Apple’s iOS and Android.
• Its launch of Facebook ads and sponsored stories on Zynga.com, marking the first time its ad units have appeared outside of the Facebook environment.
• Its launch of Facebook Exchange, also in June, aimed at allowing advertisers to bid in real-time for ads on the social network and better target users of the social network by accessing data on their non-Facebook Web activities.
• Its spate of acquisitions, highlighted by its pending $1 billion deal to acquire photo-sharing app Instagram.

BIA/Kelsey Senior Analyst Jed Williams told CNET:

Facebook has been incredibly busy and experimental over the last few months. It has made a rash of acquisitions and thrown itself into a lot of areas that it really won’t be able to monetize in three months. Right now, it feels like a lot of individual pieces, but there must be a bigger puzzle in mind.

Readers: Do you expect any big news to come out of Thursday’s earnings call?

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