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UPDATED 7:17 p.m. Friday NEW YORK — After all the hype, Facebook's first day as apublic company ended where it began. Its stock closed at $38.23, up23 cents, after pricing Thursday night at $38 per share. After an anxiety-filled half-hour delay, its stock began trading onthe Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time as investors werefinally able to put a dollar value on the company that turnedonline social networking into a global cultural phenomenon. The stock opened at 11:32 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to$38.01. By noon, it was up again at $40.40, a 6 per cent increase.It fluttered throughout the afternoon, but it never hit thedouble-digit jump that many Facebook-watchers had expected. By theend of the day, more than 500 million shares had changed hands The closing price means Facebook is worth about $105 billion, morethan Amazon.com, McDonalds and storied Silicon Valley iconsHewlett-Packard and Cisco. But as many people looked for a big first-day pop in Facebook'sshare price, the single-digit increase was somewhat of a letdown. ``It wasn't quite as exciting as it could have been,' said NickEinhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital.``But I don't think we should view it as a failure.' Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication thatFacebook and the investment banks that arranged the initial publicoffering priced the stock in an appropriate range. It's also asupply and demand issue. Facebook offered nearly 20 per cent of itsavailable stock in the IPO, so there was enough to meet demand. Incomparison, Google offered just 7.2 per cent of its stock when itwent public in 2004 _ and rose 18 per cent on day one. To IPOdesktop's Francis Gaskins, it means mom-and-pop investors arebecoming ``much more educated and careful' about not buying intohype. And he said that the banks taking Facebook public havelearned from the 10 IPOs of social media companies in the past yearand are better able to gauge how much stock to make available in aninitial offering. It might not have been possible for the social network to live upto the hype that led up to its IPO. It's Facebook, after all, aplace where people are emotionally invested in endless onlinediversions and rekindled friendships, an endless depository of babyphotos, favourite songs and fleeting memories. ``It's probably one of the first times there has been an IPO whereeveryone sort of has a stake in the outcome,' said Gartner analystBrian Blau. While most Facebook users won't see a penny from theoffering, they are all intimately familiar with the company. Earlier Friday, the company's 28-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg,smiled as he rang the opening bell from Facebook's headquarters inMenlo Park, California Surrounded by cheering Facebook employeesand wearing his signature hoodie, he pushed the button that signalsthe opening of the stock market in New York. The morning's eventsfollowed an all-night ``hackathon' at the company, where engineersstayed up coding software and conjuring up new ideas for Facebookand its 900 million users. ``Right now this all seems like a big deal. Going public is animportant milestone in our history. But here's the thing, ourmission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make theworld more open and connected,' Zuckerberg said. ``In the pasteight years, all of you out there have built the largest communityin the history of the world. You've done amazing things that wenever would have dreamed of and I can't wait to see what you guysall do going forward.' Afterward, employees tried to get back to business as usual,building the company under immense new pressure to meetshareholders' expectations. To remind everyone not to get caught upin the hoopla, Facebook's employees were given t-shirts that read``Stay focused & keep hacking.' On Thursday, Facebook and the investment bankers settled on a priceof $38 per share. The company and its early investors raised $16billion in the offering, which valued Facebook at $104 billion.That makes Facebook the most valuable U.S. company to ever gopublic. Now, the stock market will begin assigning a dollar value toFacebook that will rise and fall with investor whims. It will besubject to broad economic forces and held accountable for profit itearns — or loses — from one quarter to the next. But Facebook is one a rare companies whose IPO transcends WallStreet's money lust. It is a cultural touchstone for the waytechnology reshapes our lives. Since its start as a scrappy networkfor college students, Facebook has come to define social networkingby getting people around the world to share everything from photosof their pets to their deepest thoughts. It has done so while becoming one of the few profitable Internetcompanies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 millionin the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. Inall of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a yearearlier. That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of$138 million and revenue of $153 million. The company makes most ofits money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the moneypeople spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as``FarmVille.' Facebook's public debut marks a new milestone in the history of theInternet. In 1995, Netscape Communications' IPO gave people theirfirst chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browsermade the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotlyanticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. Thatexplosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminatedfive years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notionthat the Internet had hatched a ``new economy'. It took Google's IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company witha disruptive idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internetsearch leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new orderwhere people have come to expect to be able to find just aboutanything they want by entering a few words into a box on any devicewith an Internet connection. Facebook's IPO heralds a new phase of the Internet's evolution.This social era makes connections among people as important asGoogle's massive index of Web links. Still, the IPO will raise newpressures for Facebook to generate more revenue, perhaps by diggingfurther into the trove of revealing information that people shareon the network to sell even more targeted ads. The IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-comingentrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company's cash and stock tobuy other startups in an effort to being in other talentedengineers and promising technology. That's what has been doing foryears. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billionbuying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don't includeGoogle's still-pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone makerMotorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatoryapproval in China. Zuckerberg's biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buyInstagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1billion. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock,Instagram is already getting richer. Based on the $38 price forFacebook's stock, Instagram is in line to receive nearly $1.2billion. Though Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell from California,people outside the stock market in Times Square snapped photos of abig blue Facebook sign that lit up the building. Some of them usedtheir smart phones to check in to the Nasdaq on Facebook. FrederickNolde, who was visiting from Richmond, Virginia, said he bought 100shares through the online brokerage eTrade. He thinks the company is worth $100 billion. ``I think Google is agood comparison and it's worth $200 to 300 billion. The realquestion is how they do in mobile. If they can figure that outthey'll do well.' In Menlo Park, some mourned the one that got away. Venturecapitalist Mark Siegel visited Facebook's headquarters to ponder.Like many of his fellow tech startup investors with offices a shortdrive from Facebook on Silicon Valley's famed Sand Hill Road,Siegel said he had chances to back Facebook early on but didn't. He said at the time, when competing social networks like Friendsterand MySpace still had clout, it wasn't clear that Facebook wouldcome out on top. ``In hindsight, any price would have been a good price to pay,'said Siegel, a managing director at Menlo Ventures. There's still time. Bruno del Ama, the CEO of asset management firmGlobal X Funds, is waiting until Thursday, to get in on Facebook. ``On the first day you see a tremendous amount of volatility,' hesaid. In three days, short-sellers will be able to sell the stock,he added, so by day five, investors should see more stability.Global X has a fund focused on social media stocks, and del Amaexpects ``significant growth' in the sector in the coming decade.Facebook, right now, is the crown jewel of the space. And it'slikely here to stay, by virtue of its position. ``Once companies have built a network, it's really difficult todisplace them,' del Ama said, adding that while massive companiessuch as Google are trying to compete with Facebook — and mayhave better technology — ``we care about where our friendsare.' AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco, AssociatedPress Reporter Marcus Wohlsen in Menlo Park, AP Business WritersBernard Condon and Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to thisstory. I am an expert from mifare-smart-card.com, while we provides the quality product, such as UHF Inlay , Contacted Smart Card, Contacted Smart Card,and more.
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