Facebook goes Public

Last Friday Facebook finally went public. This means that for the first time members of the public can buy shares in the social media website. This transition has been long awaited for the eager investors that are ready to start buying one of the most valuable commodities that Facebook offers, personal information. 

All the comotion surrounded the Nasdaq offer as shares of the company - now worth between $80 billion and $110 billion - rose and fell all day on Friday the 18th. Increased doubts surrounding Facebook's business model meant the social network’s stock failed to launch as expected on its first day. Instead the IPO’s underwriters were forced to step in to prevent the shares slipping below their offer price of $38. At the market’s close the share price ended at $38.23, giving the company a market capitalisation of $105 billion.

How Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg handles the now public company and if it can continue to grow and make stockholders happy are questions that stock market analysts will debate for months. Zuckerberg and his team, need to show they can increase revenues fast enough to justify a stockmarket valuation that is more than 100 times Facebook’s 2011 profit.

Just days before going public GM Motors withdrew their advertising from Facebook which was reported to be 10 million dollars. They obviously felt that this form of advertising wasn't effective enough. This could be worrying for Facebook in the future.

One other possible concern is that they don't have an operating system or browser to guarantee its presence on mobile phones. Apple has iOS and Safari. Google has Android and Chrome. Microsoft has Windows Phone and Internet Explorer. The company depends on apps and the mobile Web. This could be dangerous, particularly because Facebook's mobile apps aren't very well regarded. Zuckerberg identified this problem and at a recent IPO roadshow he stated that improving the mobile app is his number one priority.

These concerns among others will lead to interesting times ahead for Facebook. One thing is for certain, when they release their financial information it will be scrutinized in minute detail which will produce some eagerly anticipated findings.