Tagged: Facebook

"It sucked the air out of the room."

NEW YORK (AP) — It's been a month since Facebook's IPO fell flat and in that time, the market for initial public offerings has collapsed.

No company has gone public since May 18, compared with 19 in the same period a year ago. Fourteen offerings have been withdrawn or delayed, according to Dealogic.

There are no public offerings scheduled this week. Of course, thanks to the European debt crisis, financial markets haven't been terribly conducive to IPOs. Still, venture capitalists say the fallout from Facebook's rocky IPO is making companies — especially those in the technology sector — cautious about going public.

SAN FRANCISCO — Fresh off a disappointing initial public offering, Facebook is getting a big boost from Apple, which is building the social network deep into its iPhone and iPad software.

I love this. Here is a headline today at The Wall Street Journal's online edition: "Days of Wild User Growth Appear Over at Facebook."

And over at The Next Web: "Facebook is eating the world, except for China and Russia."

And the best part is the two sites really are telling the same story.

Facebook's much-publicized first sale of stock to the public started with a bang late this morning as the price per share jumped. But though the volume of shares sold was a record for an initial public offering, the stock's price gave up its gains as the day continued.

By the end of trading in the U.S., Facebook had settled right at the $38 initial offering price that had been set before shares went on sale.

NEW YORK — Facebook has set a price range of $28 to $35 for its initial public offering of stock.

At the high end, this could raise as much as $11.8 billion. That's much higher than any other Internet IPO in the past, even Google Inc. in 2004.

Facebook filed for its initial public stock offering in February, and the IPO could take place at any time in the next several weeks.

Should you buy the stock? We ducked that question a month ago on Money Matters but now, financial commentator Greg Heberlein is willing to offer some advice. 

As with many financial issues, the answer is dependent on your personal circumstances.

Should you buy Facebook stock when it goes public in the next few months?

Like any individual stock, it's a gamble. Most investors are better off with the relative safety of a stock index fund.

But sometimes it's hard to resist the dream of striking it rich like early investors did with the Microsoft or Amazon IPOs.

On this week's Money Matters, financial commentator Greg Heberlein and KPLU's Dave Meyer look at what to expect when Facebook finally goes on the market.

Now that Facebook has filed to go public, there's a lot of reflection on how the social media site became the mammoth it is today. The site has gone through a lot of changes in its eight years. Remember when you had to have a college email address to join? Remember when you had to type "thefacebook.com"?

Facebook is about to find out just how many people like it.

The wildly popular social networking media company decided Wednesday to begin allowing its many "friends" in the public to buy its stock — likely in late spring.

The company, which has more than 800 million users, filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying it is going forward with an initial public offering. The company set the price to bring in $5 billion with those initial shares, making this one of the biggest market debuts in history.

Facebook's Timeline — the long-anticipated overhaul of the site — is rolling out across the world this week.

Timeline allows friends to surf through all your posts going back to the beginning of Facbeook time. Graphically it can be a beautiful thing. Mark Zuckerberg calls it a chance for users to tell the stories of their lives. And over the next few weeks users across the world will get it on their profile.

Facebook is apparently pretty concerned about privacy – especially its own.

After announcing that Facebook and the State Attorney General’s office would announce a “joint legal strategy" this morning, the AG’s office followed up with an email requiring journos sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The email was sent to all journalists invited to the press conference at Facebook's Seattle office involving company officials and Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna.