Social media giant Facebook is set to go public in the next few weeks, possibly as early as May 18, initially priced at between $28 and $35 a share. Mark Koba from CNBC says the IPO is ‘set to raise the roof off Wall Street’. The valuation may go as high as $100 billion (which most analysts deem extravagant; by most measures it should be closer to $50 billion).
The list of risk factors noted in the Facebook prospectus is sobering and in some ways I think I am Exhibit A for the risks. I have a Facebook profile with 40-some ‘friends’ but I have stopped making posts there. I don’t message my ‘friends’ or ‘poke’ them, or spam them with silly game requests (think Farmville) or with quizzes. I don’t like that Facebook mines information I write about to send me and my friends marketing messages. And finally – I don’t like every one of my ‘friends’ (the non-friends ‘friends’) to know every thing about me.
But hey – maybe I am old and cranky (non-social?) and there is a return on an investment to be made if one lets the dust settle and see where the stock is a week or two from the IPO.
