Social Media | featured news

Facebook shares struggled to stay above their $38 IPO price, as Wall Street bankers stepped in to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with an embarrassing loss.

There wasn't much to like about Facebook's first day as a public company. The social media giant's stock rose by mere pennies in its initial public offering. The shares closed at $38.23, barely above the $38 IPO price.The performance fell far short of the grandiose expectations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and raised questions about whether the company's stock will be the sure bet many had counted on.

Facebook on Thursday priced its initial public offering at $38 per share. The social networking company, which is expected to go public tomorrow under the ticker symbol "FB," stands to reap $18.4 billion in the IPO.

Pinterest, which allows users to share photographs, recipes and other media on custom "pinboards," raised $100 million in a funding round led by the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten.

Facebook Inc. co-founder Eduardo Saverin will save at least $67 million in federal income taxes by dropping U.S. citizenship, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the company’s stock price. Those savings will keep growing if Facebook’s shares increase.

The company's employees and investors are spending in advance of their big payday, fueling an economy that's already humming thanks to the Bay Area's thriving technology sector. The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy.

Mark Zuckerberg was not kidding about Facebook’s hacker culture. The night before the chartbusting initial public stock offering, engineers won’t be counting their Facebook dollars. They’ll be doing what they have always done: Hack. Facebook will pull an all-night hackathon that will end when Zuckerberg rings the Nasdaq’s opening bell from Facebook’s Menlo Park campus.

Investors who want Facebook Inc shares when the No. 1 online social network goes public later this week may have lost the opportunity. TD Ameritrade and Fidelity's brokerage arm both stopped accepting orders of Facebook shares as of Tuesday evening, according to representatives for each of the companies.

General Motors Co said on Tuesday it will stop advertising on Facebook, even as the social networking website prepares to go public, with a source familiar with the matter saying the automaker had decided Facebook's ads had little impact on consumers.

It?s entirely possible to create a list of reasons why you and I should be trying to buy stock in the Facebook IPO. There might well be a price pop given the interest in the issue. The company looks as if it might well become part of the basic infrastructure of the modern world.