After much anticipation by Wallstreet and industry analysts Facebook finally had their IPO (Initial Public Offering).  Mark Zuckerburg rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq stock market today, signaling the start of share dealing in the U.S.  The first trade was registered as $43, up about 13 percent from an IPO price of $38.  It wasn’t all good news though as you can see on the graph on the right…the stock ended the day at just 23 cents over it’s opening price.  This is slightly disappointing for a number of investors considering that Facebook’s IPO is the 3rd largest ever for any US company.

But what does this all mean for you?

Enough of the market speak.  What does this mean for you and I who are not investors and who probably will never buy any Facebook stock?  Well, mainly it just means that Facebook is probably going to get worse than it currently is.  The reason why Facebook was so great when it first started was because it’s only purpose was to connect people.  There were no ads, no sponsored posts, no invasion of privacy.  It only wanted to connect you with long lost friends and keep you up to date with all of your current friends.  As Sean Parker famously said at the beginning it’s what made Facebook “cool”.  But as time has progressed and the company (because that is what Facebook really is) has grown they’ve needed to make money to support itself.  But now that it has gone public and has investors, they are obligated to now make even more money!  How will they do that?  Only time will really tell but my guess is that we will be seeing more ads for one.  I really don’t like seeing sponsored posts in my Newsfeed but these are the types of creative ways that Facebook will pursue to try and satisfy their investors.  So treasure your time on Facebook now, because one day we may look back and wish for the days when Facebook was still a privately owned “cool” company.