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Taking stock after the Facebook IPO Taking stock after the Facebook IPO
(5 months later)
On Friday morning, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, CEO, and majority shareholder, rang the Nasdaq opening bell and made history with one of the largest IPOs in years. It was exactly the kind of mania that made the dotcom era a profoundly silly time – irrational exuberance all the way to the bank in an era that became known more for the greed, ridiculousness, and excess than it did from the occasionally groundbreaking work that was changing how people did business at the dawn of the modern internet era.On Friday morning, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, CEO, and majority shareholder, rang the Nasdaq opening bell and made history with one of the largest IPOs in years. It was exactly the kind of mania that made the dotcom era a profoundly silly time – irrational exuberance all the way to the bank in an era that became known more for the greed, ridiculousness, and excess than it did from the occasionally groundbreaking work that was changing how people did business at the dawn of the modern internet era.
Except, on Friday, the mania didn't show up on schedule.Except, on Friday, the mania didn't show up on schedule.
After weeks of breathless anticipation, the Facebook IPO fizzled, with institutions having to step in and buy shares to keep the stock from slipping below the strike price of $38. This shocking and heartbreaking development will now be accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingers clattering over keys, as pundits and analysts everywhere tweet and blog and chatter over what went wrong.After weeks of breathless anticipation, the Facebook IPO fizzled, with institutions having to step in and buy shares to keep the stock from slipping below the strike price of $38. This shocking and heartbreaking development will now be accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingers clattering over keys, as pundits and analysts everywhere tweet and blog and chatter over what went wrong.
But this supposes something has actually gone wrong. But this supposes something has actually gone wrong. 
Let us remember, first, that Facebook the company had this IPO in order to go public with its stock, and raised more than $16bn for its troubles. So, they aren't unhappy: that's what they were expecting, and that's what they got. Before IPOs became carnivals of capitalism, that was actually the point.Let us remember, first, that Facebook the company had this IPO in order to go public with its stock, and raised more than $16bn for its troubles. So, they aren't unhappy: that's what they were expecting, and that's what they got. Before IPOs became carnivals of capitalism, that was actually the point.
Zuckerberg and the other Facebook pre-IPO shareholders aren't unhappy this weekend – they're rich. Yes, some of them could be wishing that they were almost incalculably rich instead of merely being the more prosaic filthy rich, but if you catch one of them at a fake German beerhall in Palo Alto bitching about this, you should punch them immediately – the way they trained us in our self-defense classes years ago, when we were all taught these techniques in case an insufferable internet millionaire douchebag might one day desperately need an attitude adjustment. Zuckerberg and the other Facebook pre-IPO shareholders aren't unhappy this weekend – they're rich. Yes, some of them could be wishing that they were almost incalculably rich instead of merely being the more prosaic filthy rich, but if you catch one of them at a fake German beerhall in Palo Alto bitching about this, you should punch them immediately – the way they trained us in our self-defense classes years ago, when we were all taught these techniques in case an insufferable internet millionaire douchebag might one day desperately need an attitude adjustment. 
Is it us? Are we the ones who are disappointed? I don't know – given how restricted and voodoo-y IPO stock launches are, I doubt the average reader skimming this article was in on the first day of trading. I know I don't have any Facebook stock, and I doubt you do, too.Is it us? Are we the ones who are disappointed? I don't know – given how restricted and voodoo-y IPO stock launches are, I doubt the average reader skimming this article was in on the first day of trading. I know I don't have any Facebook stock, and I doubt you do, too.
So, who is upset? Who didn't get what they were looking for? One hint: you're looking at it, and in another age, it was used to wrap fish.So, who is upset? Who didn't get what they were looking for? One hint: you're looking at it, and in another age, it was used to wrap fish.
Media loves the big IPO stories. They love every part of them: they love the narrative arc; they love the idea of workers slaving away every day and then, one magical morning, getting millions and millions of dollars. They love the skullduggery of how they get set up, and the way it all seems to rest on the fate of a single day – what happens in those first moments, as the stock hits the market and demand asserts itself. Media loves the big IPO stories. They love every part of them: they love the narrative arc; they love the idea of workers slaving away every day and then, one magical morning, getting millions and millions of dollars. They love the skullduggery of how they get set up, and the way it all seems to rest on the fate of a single day – what happens in those first moments, as the stock hits the market and demand asserts itself. 
Stories like this make financial analysts' eyes dilate, the blood quicken, the pulse sound in the ears. We all recognize it, because it's pornography. There are different types of porn: war porn, patriotism porn … and this, of course, is finance porn. You can tell it is porn because it demands nothing of the viewer, and comforts those who get off on it. But no matter how nice porn can be, it's not a dialogue. It's not news. It is spectacle, and by participating in it, we devolve the dialogue. Stories like this make financial analysts' eyes dilate, the blood quicken, the pulse sound in the ears. We all recognize it, because it's pornography. There are different types of porn: war porn, patriotism porn … and this, of course, is finance porn. You can tell it is porn because it demands nothing of the viewer, and comforts those who get off on it. But no matter how nice porn can be, it's not a dialogue. It's not news. It is spectacle, and by participating in it, we devolve the dialogue. 
We are perhaps hungry for it because we have no dialogue with the corporations. Now that labor is a relic of the past that is largely ignored, there's no battlefield to make the corporation look human, to make it fit into the narrative of a great story. There are no strikes, no unrest: workers aren't capable of raising more than a mild sense of indigestion at whatever they face, and they choke that down lest they endanger their positions. We are perhaps hungry for it because we have no dialogue with the corporations. Now that labor is a relic of the past that is largely ignored, there's no battlefield to make the corporation look human, to make it fit into the narrative of a great story. There are no strikes, no unrest: workers aren't capable of raising more than a mild sense of indigestion at whatever they face, and they choke that down lest they endanger their positions. 
We have been trained to believe that a business story only exists from the top down – and through that lens, there are few things as dynamic and newsworthy as an IPO. In an environment without financial stories that the media wants to tell, the IPO becomes a bar mitzvah, a coming of age where, instead of bringing gifts, the public company showers its faithful with riches instead.We have been trained to believe that a business story only exists from the top down – and through that lens, there are few things as dynamic and newsworthy as an IPO. In an environment without financial stories that the media wants to tell, the IPO becomes a bar mitzvah, a coming of age where, instead of bringing gifts, the public company showers its faithful with riches instead.
No one suffered when there wasn't an outbreak of abject mania at the Facebook IPO. In fact, maybe many of us gained: if the markets behave in a rational manner, if we do not submit to hype and hysteria, perhaps we can live a rational life within them? Work for the sake of what is done, not what is gained? Perhaps, we can dream of leaving the dotcom era behind?No one suffered when there wasn't an outbreak of abject mania at the Facebook IPO. In fact, maybe many of us gained: if the markets behave in a rational manner, if we do not submit to hype and hysteria, perhaps we can live a rational life within them? Work for the sake of what is done, not what is gained? Perhaps, we can dream of leaving the dotcom era behind?
Perhaps. But the lure of narrative is strong, and we are always seeking the next trend. In Fight Club, Ed Norton taught us that you are not the things you own. It's a decade later, but we may need to learn that we are not our share prices, either.Perhaps. But the lure of narrative is strong, and we are always seeking the next trend. In Fight Club, Ed Norton taught us that you are not the things you own. It's a decade later, but we may need to learn that we are not our share prices, either.
Comments
50 comments, displaying first
19 May 2012 3:35PM
Looks like the entrepreneurial spirit and the free market is alive and well. Long live capitalism!
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19 May 2012 3:57PM
I have no objection to hype and hysteria except when someone is trying to sell me something that is overpriced.
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19 May 2012 3:58PM
Great day for the market! Maybe they actually use those "superior" minds instead of acting like sheep -
What I haven't heard anywhere is what will post IPO Facebook look like? Will I get pop up ads for stuff I don't need every time I jump on? The people who put up the $16 billion or so will actually expect profits in a few years- and that may get ugly.
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19 May 2012 4:01PM
I have no doubt they priced the shares to the maximum knowing the higher the price paid, the less likely they will be sold immediately to make a fast buck, sadly for those that think this is going to run on will be disappointed as the price stagnates.
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19 May 2012 4:03PM
I know Facebook is incredibly popular right now but I'm amazed that something which is so sensitive to changes in youth culture has generated such a high market valuation.
Didn't Murdoch catch a huge cold over his purchase of My Space? It really only takes a shift to the 'next big thing' for Facebook revenues to plummet.
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19 May 2012 4:07PM
Its no different to a Ponzi scheme with the initial investors cashing out and leaving the new investors with a share of this decade's MySpace. Its like the past 5 years never happened.
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19 May 2012 4:08PM
Im going to short this bubble like mad on I G
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19 May 2012 4:08PM
Invest in Bebo it's the big coming thing !
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19 May 2012 4:15PM
Its no different to a Ponzi scheme with the initial investors cashing out
Not really. Buyers of Facebook in the IPO or post-IPO know exactly what they are getting. Unlike a Ponzi Scheme.
Now I happen to agree with many that FB is ludicrously over-valued and vulnerable to changing tastes but there are plenty out who evidently disagree with me.
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19 May 2012 4:19PM
Exactly what is the product Facebook is producing that is supposed to make it so valuable, apart from the advertising that it generates I can't see anything of value. So in effect it's value is dependent on others, the advertisers and not on itself!
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19 May 2012 4:25PM
Good point - Rather like a parasite.
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19 May 2012 4:25PM
I thought FB was overpriced at $38 but I bought 100 shares anyway. Why? Well, maybe it's because I thought Google was overpriced at $85 and didn't buy any of it. FB was priced more than double Google's IPO valuation by any standard measure. Is Mark Zuckerberg the next Steve Jobs? He will have to be to meet the expectations inherit in this IPO price.
One thing not mentioned is the fact that more than 80 million shares traded in the first 30 seconds. That was after it opened 30 minutes later than the announced opening time. It opened at $42.05, shot up to $45 and then quickly settled back down to $38 before rising again above $41 before drifting back down to the IPO price. Much of that initial confusion was the result of the NASDAQ crashing and being unable to inform buyers and sellers of the results of their placed orders for 2 hrs 27 min. Even then they didn't get all of the orders straight. Their computers were inadequate to handle the task. People didn't know for hours whether their order had been executed or not, something you usually know in less than a second. NASDAQ = not quite ready for prime time.
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19 May 2012 4:27PM
So, what did the first day mean? Many ordinary investors and some major ones stayed away and precipitated a bailout by the underwriters. Too bad for those caught in the hype in which the media played a role.
Facebook share price might rise or go down. But that is not going to have any lasting effect on the psychology of ordinary investors who think of making quick profit....and once in a while some of them do. One can rest assured that the pundits and columnists will be there with one puff piece after another when the next star appears in the hi-tech galaxy.
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19 May 2012 4:29PM
The whole thing was a disgusting and aggressive side show...like a Louis XIV fashion show staged in an Indonesian workhouse...a revolting show of opulence and petulance in the face of a world of austerity and poverty...
No one is ever...ever...ever going to improve their lives through this floatation...except the already stinking parasitical rich who have meticulously built a house of greed on the stupidity of the desperate...and all they'll achieve is microscopic status fluctuations in a place of such astronomical wealth that only the tiny fw will notice as the billions struggle around them...
I have nothing but contempt for the whole filthy spectacle...
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19 May 2012 4:33PM
I understand your point but I would like to remind you that Mark Zuckerberg still controls 57.3% of the voting stock in FB, even after selling more than 30 million shares. No one, not even the board, can make him do anything he doesn't want to do. Shareholders who bought FB stock are betting that this 28-year-old young man will succeed because there's not much they can do if they don't like his performance. They certainly can't fire him.
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19 May 2012 4:39PM
Why is this proven fraud of a 'journalist' being paid by the Guardian to comment on anything?
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19 May 2012 4:40PM
Why? Well, maybe it's because I thought Google was overpriced at $85 and didn't buy any of it.
If you want to understand the power of Google, it's only necessary to look at how difficult its competitors have found it to make any inroads into its market share. When a product name becomes synonymous with the act of using it you know it is a winner, and love it or hate it, Google's search software is very sophisticated. They also provide a wide range of other software offerings outside of search.
As for Facebook, I haven't used it but from what I have seen of my children's usage, it wouldn't appear to be that technically difficult to mimic. It is only market share which protects it really, and just as FB replaced MySpace, it could itself be replaced.
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19 May 2012 4:47PM
I kind of feel like this is a good news story about the markets. Investors making rational decisions based on the company's performance and future prospects.
It's a bad news story, however, for the media who continue to manufacture stories where they don't exist.
Of course, it kind of was FB's job to try to hype the IPO, wasn't it?
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19 May 2012 4:59PM
The Mail (sorry) has a different take on this.
The shares were up on the day, however modestly. Zuckerberg is $19 billion better off; U2's Bono is $1.5 bn better off. Nobody has obviously lost anything.
What's the problem?
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19 May 2012 5:01PM
bleh
Jesus...ok...the thing you call the markets...by which you mean a kind of fantasy non-existent Mom-and-Pop-corner-store-hard-working-open-market instead of the reality of a financialised storm of debt-creating banker loan-sharks who hold entire nations at ransom...this thing is falling deeper into a state of Great Stagnation that will decimate the lives of millions nay billions round the world for who knows how long and you think that floating a bubblicious service like face book is good news?!?
...I actually agree that the media manufactures idiotic stories where they don't exist...but your post is proof that those stories are so skewed in favour of a benign and positive capitalism that you can use words like "markets" without the slightest idea what they really mean...
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19 May 2012 5:04PM
a company is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. you guys can spit all the vocabulary on this wonderful white page hating a business world which you depend on regardless. It'll make no difference the guy living in soho with 20,000 lying around wanting to buy share research or not.
The valuation in my opinion is silly, but the company make billions at the end of day. Can the guardian get someone to argue FOR facebook just for fun. All this fairy anti capitalism holy than thou opinions are rich coming from people who probably kiss the behind of directors at work to get that promotion and alas make more money. nooo, but ur not bad are you its them, the a-holes that started the place...
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19 May 2012 5:10PM
That Facebook IPO made me a quick $722 for the short time I owned 200 shares between 12:00 and 12:30, yesterday, so I am quite happy!
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19 May 2012 5:14PM
lthe world is not as tangible as you think. the service => the convience of having your social life being extended to the internet, maintained through ads.
think of bottled water.
convenience is worth trillions.
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19 May 2012 5:15PM
criticalthinkrrr
Nice one...you should spend it on a wheelbarrow so you can wheel all your casino capitalist winnings down to the local and get yourself a pint to celebrate...because if you really are a criticalthinkrrr...you'll have noticed a plummeting downward spiral on shares and a long long term stagnation heading your way...'
...but at least you've hit it big on the penny arcade just as the whole pier disappears into the sea...well done you ;)
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19 May 2012 5:22PM
Someone already called this, but to reiterate:
Why should I bother listening to a journalist who just spins bare-faced lies?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/17/mike-daisey-this-american-life
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19 May 2012 5:27PM
At last an article with a sense of perspective,This Facepuck nonsense is just OTT.
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19 May 2012 5:31PM
Duh - I am smart enough to buy low and sell high on the first day of an IPO!
I do this on the first day of all tech IPO's, I wait until the intial flurry of the buying is over with and wait for the inevitable price dropping to bottom out.
After the price has risen for at least two minutes, I buy and wait for the inevitable price drop.
After the price has risen for at least two minutes, I sell and make a quick profit.
Me thinks you are envious because you didn't think of doing it!
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19 May 2012 5:32PM
That should be:
After the price has fallen for at least two minutes, I sell and make a quick profit
Surely I am not the first person to notice that this happens on nearly all IPO's?
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19 May 2012 5:37PM
We all recognize it, because it's pornography. There are different types of porn: war porn, patriotism porn … and this, of course, is finance porn.
Wow, that's original.
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19 May 2012 5:50PM
Yes of course it is.
Seeing ducks on water also proves they have legs that can be anything from a foot to 30 or 40 feet or more long.
But just for clarifications sake what does the world economies from around 2008 say? That it had a bit of a sniffle as opposed to contracting the Ebola virus?
Which would suggest that you advocate deliberate obsfurcation, deceit and willful manipulation that causes financial melt down. Do you often buy a car and when it contsantly breaks down just shrug and after spending thousands to have it repaired shout yay it is "alive and well. Long live my car" and also declare that it is the best model ever.
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19 May 2012 5:51PM
I too would like to ask why on earth the opinion of this pompous fraud is worth The Guardians money, surely there are more qualified people to talk about this?
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19 May 2012 5:52PM
What do we do as we watch a new and cruder Gilded Age in extrema metastasize before our eyes?
A company that sells mostly gossip is valued at $115 billion? This is what American business has come to?
Is it just me or is this whole thing just absurd? Another sign that there has been way too much money thrown out there by this brain dead government. How can this company possibly be worth $100,000,000,000?
Immense wealth accumulating in the hands of a few, most of whom know not how to use it to better ends. Who wants and needs millions and billions while larger societal needs go unrecognized and unmet? Real human progress stalls.
A virtual company and virtual money. Very Scary. And when the virtual world of economics comes down to Earth or the real world, then look out... Money will be worthless and real things like food will cost a fortune.
Just think about the number of people sitting in front of computer screens in this virtual economy. How long can this be sustained one wonders.
But the brass band plays on. And the New York Times and others treat this grotesque spectacle not as the piffle it is, but like the Second Coming.
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19 May 2012 5:56PM
If it were easy to displace Facebook, I'm sure Google or Microsoft would have done it by now. The challenge for FB now is to dominate the mobile market and gain entry into China. Since Zuckerberg controls 57.3% of Facebook's voting stock, he doesn't have to worry about near-term performance.
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19 May 2012 6:09PM
If it were easy to displace Facebook, I'm sure Google or Microsoft would have done it by now.
You know, I'd bet that Murdoch's advisers said exactly the same thing about MySpace.
I'm not saying it would be easy, just that FB is heavily reliant on the loyalty of its users, when internet users by and large aren't a particularly loyal bunch. For example, how many of the original search engines flourished once Google came along?
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19 May 2012 6:11PM
I'd like to "fizzle" my way to $100 billion.
To sell electronic certificates at $38 each in multiples of 100 seems like a good way to make money, even if you only actually sell say 10% of them to the public and have to buy 90% through investment bank shills.
Mr. Barnum of Bridgeport would have been pleased.
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19 May 2012 6:18PM
Well, it was a fizzle to the bankers as they had to support the price to keep it from dropping below $38. Perhaps the media is unhappy about not having a story about eyepopping one day gains to report, but they can satisfy themselves with stories about a fizzle. On the other hand, had there been a big first day pop Facebook and its insiders could complain that they left too much change on the table and priced it too low. As it turns out, they probably priced it as close as they could to the maximum price they could get.
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19 May 2012 6:29PM
Facebook's share price will halve in the coming months.
Investors have been sold a pup.
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19 May 2012 7:00PM
I guess you wrap up a shit sandwich in enough glittery paper and ribbon and some fool will buy it.
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19 May 2012 7:14PM
I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and shorting Facebook and internet technology stocks in general.
Most of them in my opinion are over valued.
Companies like Facebook just don't have enough revenues to sustain the current market valuation!
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19 May 2012 7:19PM
If it were easy to displace Facebook, I'm sure Google or Microsoft would have done it by now. The challenge for FB now is to dominate the mobile market and gain entry into China. Since Zuckerberg controls 57.3% of Facebook's voting stock, he doesn't have to worry about near-term performance.

One may argue that the main reason FB has a loyal community is they know their friends are there. All that is needed to get users off FB and onto a new platform would be a massive advertising campaign and / or viral marketing (something Facebook exploited).
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19 May 2012 9:17PM
Facebook can ensure the loyalty of its users through the range and quality of funtionality that it delivers. Google offers a cluster of services around collaboration (filesharing, email) and search, Facebook around social interactions (IM, online multi-player gaming, contacts lists, microblogging etc). They're the twin internet behemoths, they don't do niche, but they're plenty good enough for 80% of users and they work. Neither is going away anytime soon and the mountain of money each has is a massive barrier to entry. I'm afraid that you're being a bit naive.
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20 May 2012 12:31AM
I bought at $40, sold at $38.50 via a stop loss. Meh.
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20 May 2012 12:34AM
Yea, whatever you say.
That's why capitalism, like it is has been said about its cousin in the political realm*, is the worst form of economic activity... apart from all the rest.
(* 'democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the rest' - Churchill)
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20 May 2012 1:15AM
Haven't read the comments so I don't know if this has been posted already, but isn't this Mike Daisey the fantasist from 'This American Life' infamy? What an earth is this paper hiring a liar to write for them?
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20 May 2012 1:33AM
I would answer but I haven't read your comment.
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20 May 2012 2:43AM
What on earth is this paper hiring a liar to write for them? ppparker
Jabba the Hut wasn't available apparently.
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20 May 2012 2:50AM
The Facebook IPO: Like This, But Don't Friend It - http://www.preludetotheendoftheworld.com/2012/05/facebook-ipo-like-this-but-dont-friend.html
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20 May 2012 3:09AM
Remind me why we are listening to this serial liar? Go away Mike.
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21 May 2012 2:05AM
damn that shit is crazy, liar, no liar? Check out Jazi’s new album “I.D.G.A.F.” dropping June 1st and download it exclusively on reverb nation -jazihawaii - Also, download Jazi’s single “Get You Home” for free and be on the lookout for Jazi’s new music video dropping soon. Add Jazi on twitter - jaziHI - Thank you for all the love and support.
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21 May 2012 3:33AM
The Facebook IPO: Like This, But Don't Friend It - http://www.preludetotheendoftheworld.com/2012/05/facebook-ipo-like-this-but-dont-friend.html
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As Facebook's public offering fizzled, so did the media's 'finance porn' hype. And perhaps a sense of just proportion was restored
On Friday morning, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, CEO, and majority shareholder, rang the Nasdaq opening bell and made history with one of the largest IPOs in years. It was exactly the kind of mania that made the dotcom era a profoundly silly time – irrational exuberance all the way to the bank in an era that became known more for the greed, ridiculousness, and excess than it did from the occasionally groundbreaking work that was changing how people did business at the dawn of the modern internet era.
Except, on Friday, the mania didn't show up on schedule.
After weeks of breathless anticipation, the Facebook IPO fizzled, with institutions having to step in and buy shares to keep the stock from slipping below the strike price of $38. This shocking and heartbreaking development will now be accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingers clattering over keys, as pundits and analysts everywhere tweet and blog and chatter over what went wrong.
But this supposes something has actually gone wrong. 
Let us remember, first, that Facebook the company had this IPO in order to go public with its stock, and raised more than $16bn for its troubles. So, they aren't unhappy: that's what they were expecting, and that's what they got. Before IPOs became carnivals of capitalism, that was actually the point.
Zuckerberg and the other Facebook pre-IPO shareholders aren't unhappy this weekend – they're rich. Yes, some of them could be wishing that they were almost incalculably rich instead of merely being the more prosaic filthy rich, but if you catch one of them at a fake German beerhall in Palo Alto bitching about this, you should punch them immediately – the way they trained us in our self-defense classes years ago, when we were all taught these techniques in case an insufferable internet millionaire douchebag might one day desperately need an attitude adjustment. 
Is it us? Are we the ones who are disappointed? I don't know – given how restricted and voodoo-y IPO stock launches are, I doubt the average reader skimming this article was in on the first day of trading. I know I don't have any Facebook stock, and I doubt you do, too.
So, who is upset? Who didn't get what they were looking for? One hint: you're looking at it, and in another age, it was used to wrap fish.
Media loves the big IPO stories. They love every part of them: they love the narrative arc; they love the idea of workers slaving away every day and then, one magical morning, getting millions and millions of dollars. They love the skullduggery of how they get set up, and the way it all seems to rest on the fate of a single day – what happens in those first moments, as the stock hits the market and demand asserts itself. 
Stories like this make financial analysts' eyes dilate, the blood quicken, the pulse sound in the ears. We all recognize it, because it's pornography. There are different types of porn: war porn, patriotism porn … and this, of course, is finance porn. You can tell it is porn because it demands nothing of the viewer, and comforts those who get off on it. But no matter how nice porn can be, it's not a dialogue. It's not news. It is spectacle, and by participating in it, we devolve the dialogue. 
We are perhaps hungry for it because we have no dialogue with the corporations. Now that labor is a relic of the past that is largely ignored, there's no battlefield to make the corporation look human, to make it fit into the narrative of a great story. There are no strikes, no unrest: workers aren't capable of raising more than a mild sense of indigestion at whatever they face, and they choke that down lest they endanger their positions. 
We have been trained to believe that a business story only exists from the top down – and through that lens, there are few things as dynamic and newsworthy as an IPO. In an environment without financial stories that the media wants to tell, the IPO becomes a bar mitzvah, a coming of age where, instead of bringing gifts, the public company showers its faithful with riches instead.
No one suffered when there wasn't an outbreak of abject mania at the Facebook IPO. In fact, maybe many of us gained: if the markets behave in a rational manner, if we do not submit to hype and hysteria, perhaps we can live a rational life within them? Work for the sake of what is done, not what is gained? Perhaps, we can dream of leaving the dotcom era behind?
Perhaps. But the lure of narrative is strong, and we are always seeking the next trend. In Fight Club, Ed Norton taught us that you are not the things you own. It's a decade later, but we may need to learn that we are not our share prices, either.