Facebook Stocks Anyone?

The New York Stock Exchange will soon be displaying a new ticker symbol on its boards, “FB”. The eight year old company, Facebook is going public, a highly anticipated initial public offering which has been talked about since last year.

Facebook Inc. hopes to raise $5 billion in its IPO, a record breaking amount for any Internet company. Back in 2004, Google Inc. raised $1.9 billion. The IPO will give Facebook enough funds to further expand its business and to fend off companies like Google and potential startups from taking its leadership in the social networking space.

The Internet social network is going public eight years after its computer-hacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University. Zuckerberg, 27, the youngest Billionaire ever, has emerged as the latest in a string of Silicon Valley big shots who are praised as game changers.

The IPO will also make millionaires of hundreds of its employees. A lot of the Facebook employees acquired their shares at a much lower price as compared to what its value will be in the open market.

Facebook leads a whole new batch of Internet startups that have been going public during the past year.
Pandora Media Inc., professional networking service LinkedIn Corp. and daily deals company Groupon Inc. were the first ones to get into publicly offering their stocks. Most of these Internet IPOs haven’t lived up to the public’s expectations, including the highly anticipated Zynga Inc. IPO which fell short of what investors were hoping for.

Investors are hoping that Facebook will be different. One thing’s for sure, people are expected to line up to get a hold of these shares. With so many people clicking the like button, you can only imagine how many want to be a part of this Facebook milestone.