Leading up to Facebooks IPO, excitement peaks

Krystal Peak · May 18, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/26d4

Mark Zuckerberg, Randi Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin update their status' about Facebook IPO

The price has been set and all the filings have been closed. Now, Facebook is set to enter the NASDAQ Stock Market at 11 a.m. and finally answer the big question that has been looming: just how big this debut will be.

Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. Now, regular investors will have a chance to buy stock in Facebook for the first time. The stock will trade under ticker symbol will be FB.

It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. They sure came a long was from 2007, when the company posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million.

Facebook's valuation is the third-highest in an IPO. Thus far, only two Chinese banks, Agricultural Bank of China in 2010 and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006, have been worth more. They were worth $133 billion and $132 billion, respectively.

Facebook ranks as third in U.S. IPOs. The largest was Visa, which raised $17.9 billion in 2008. No. 2 was Enel, a power company, and No. 4 was General Motors.

As excitement reaches a boiling point in Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, several of the people closely tied to the social network's humble beginnings in a Harvard dorm room and its early years in Palo Alto are turning to the service to share their thoughts.

Randi Zuckerberg updated her Facebook status just moments before her brother rang the NASDAQ bell: Facebook has been a major part of my life and the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. I'm excited to see the company embark on this next chapter. Many congratulations to Mark and the entire Facebook team on today's tremendous milestone!.

Co-founder, and hub of expatriation controversy Eduardo Saverin updated his Facebook status: Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg on keeping tremendous stead-fast focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place.

And at 6:30 a.m. PST, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook employees Sheryl Sandberg, Dave King and Cipora Herman all changed their Facebook activity to state that they had "listed a company on NASDAQ" appear. A status update few will get the opportunity to do. How'd they do that, you may ask. It was a status specially created by the all-night hack-a-thon hosted at the Menlo Park headquarters last night. Pretty nifty.

Some hackers working with Zuckerberg, turned the NASDAQ into an open graph so that activity could be posted and made it so that these Facebook employees were the first to ever commemorate their IPO debut via Facebook in this manner. We expect nothing less, really.

We can hope there are more specialized updates like that to come throughout the day.