Everything You Need to Know About Facebook's IPO

Reuters
Rebecca Greenfield 1,827 Views May 18, 2012

Now that Facebook's finished its first day on the market, it's time to figure out what it all means. It ended the day at a price of $38.23 per share, almost exactly where it started the morning at $38 per share, does that mean today basically didn't happen? No. As you can see over at our live blog, it was an eventful day, which saw the stock peak at $45 per share, amid tech glitches and a resounding meh from the Internet. What does this mean for Facebook? America? The Internet? Me? You? Let's find out. 

Tell me more about this $38 stock price.

So, Facebook's debut was a total failure then?

Was it that social media bubble thing?

This is depressing. At least tell me somebody got rich.

  • Yes. Thanks to this fun Wall Street Journal Wealth-O-Meter, we see Mark Zuckerberg ended the day at $19.8 billion.  (Holy god, that is so much money.) 
  • Yes it is! Bloomberg says it makes Zuck richer than the Google Founders. 
  • Others benefited too, though. BuzzFeed has a rundown complete with clip-art visualizations of people Facebook who got rich today.
  • And the New York Times' Quentin Hardy reminds us of all the Facebook peons who made smaller fortunes this afternoon. 

Enough with the numbers. What does this all mean for Facebook's future?

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