Friday is Facebooks IPO day, as investors rush to purchase a stake in the Social Media company. As of now, according to CNN, Facebooks shares opened at $42.05, reportedly 11 percent higher than the anticipated $38 IPO share price. And as Facebook is on track to raise $16 billion, this blogger says to Mark Zuckerberg, who raised $1.1 billion and has a remaining stake worth $19.1 billion, “Carry On My Wayward Son!”
Facebook is worth $104 Billion, and more than Kraft and McDonald’s.
Facebook celebrated the event with an all-night hackathon that ended with Zuckerberg ringing the opening bell for the NASDAQ Exchange. Here’s a video from AlJazeera English, where economist Max Wolff explains that Zynga represents about 20 percent of Facebook’s revenue, and yet its stock is trading down, not up, as of this writing:
Twitter Reaction To Facebook IPO
The reaction on Twitter is interesting, with some pointing to other social networks as crying in the face of Facebook’s success.
Facebook raises $16 billion in the biggest initial public offering by a technology company in history | bloom.bg/L3uvuA $FB
— Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) May 17, 2012
Reddit, Tumblr Founders Slam and Cheer Facebook IPO bit.ly/JSNB8v
— VerifiedCyborg (@RevezNexus) May 18, 2012
So what do you think? How Long Can Facebook Reign As Social Media Champ? on.mash.to/JDnkfT via @mashable
— Gina Goodman (@CisionNavigator) May 18, 2012
And I have to include this wonderfully cute, if annoying song about the Facebook IPO:
What do I think about all this? It marks the official transformation of how we do business. The idea that a firm’s value is based on how much money it makes is not true any more. That’s the takeaway.
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll