Popular social networking service begins offering stock for public trading

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:56:28 +0000

Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen on a screen televised from their headquarters in Menlo Park moments after their IPO launch in New York. (REUTERS)

Shares of Facebook (FB) opened at $42.05 on today, up about 11 percent from the IPO price of $38. At this valuation, the company is worth around $115 billion. But shortly after the open, despite all the bubblicious hype leading up to FB's debut: share price dropped. At the time of this blog post, the price is hovering around $38.

The WSJ reports that trading volume was more than 375 million in first three hours of listing, more than 6.5% of total market volume. Trade volume is expected to set a new record in trading volume on IPO day.

STOCKENFREUDE (n): That feeling you get, as someone who loathes Facebook, seeing FB shares crap out on IPO day.

Analysis: NYT Dealbook, CBS, USA Today, SJ Merc, LAT, WSJ.

Facebook shares show no gain on day one. In other breaking news, the Winklevii are cackling and rolling a blunt.
— N'Gai Croal (@ncroal) May 18, 2012

Weird, I swore Yahoo had a patent on flat stock growth. Add it to the lawsuit pile.
— MG Siegler (@parislemon) May 18, 2012

By the flat = win for Facebook logic, closing under $38 would have been a bigger win since they would have sold higher than market value.
— Gabriel Snyder (@gabrielsnyder) May 18, 2012

Facebook ends the day at $38. It's like this whole day of trading never happened.
— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) May 18, 2012

I predicted Facebook would finish the day below $38. I'd forgotten about the underwriters. It'll be $32 next week.
— John Perry Barlow (@JPBarlow) May 18, 2012

T-shirt: "I created an 800 million user platform that's barely begun to monetize and all I got was this $104 billion valuation."
— Chris Sacca (@sacca) May 18, 2012

So happy to see some kids from Harvard finally get a break.
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) May 18, 2012

More like IPOh Wow! Congrats to Mork Zipperberg & the whole Facebooks team! #money #stocks #wallstreet #bells #yelling #hello!
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) May 18, 2012

Facebook's share prices are seen inside the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York May 18, 2012. (REUTERS)

Facebook launches a new game: Organ Farmville

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:18:40 +0000

Facebook announced today that the social network's 161 million members in the United States will be encouraged to begin displaying "organ donor status" on their pages, along with birth dates and schools. Some 7,000 people die every year in America while waiting for an organ transplant, and the idea here, according to this New York Times story, is to "create peer pressure to nudge more people to add their names to the rolls of registered donors." Absolutely nothing could go wrong. (via John Schwartz)

Boing Boing » social networks

Popular social networking service begins offering stock for public trading

Facebook launches a new game: Organ Farmville