Social Media News

1. Facebook "Like" Custom Pet/Dog/Cat iD Tag

These ID tags show how much you like your pet, as well as help you stay connected. Hey, just like the social network!

Via Lucy Loos Pet Shop.

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There are cats on Twitter, dogs on Facebook, birds that won’t stop checking in on Foursquare (OK, we haven’t witnessed that last one, but it’s probably true). And let’s not even get started on all the cuddly animals on YouTube.

The point is, pets, social media and tech go well together, and you — their owners — are to thank. Therefore, check out the gallery above for some inspirational examples of tech-savvy pet gear. Your four-legged friends will be walking, playing and tweeting in geeky style.

SEE ALSO: Happy Puppy Day! Top 10 Dogs to Follow on Social Media

What kind of tech-themed gear does your pet have? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, diane39.

More About: animals, Facebook, features, pets, Social Media, Tech, trending, Twitter

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Twitter users who participated in a crowdsourced prediction for Facebook’s IPO day closing price collectively missed the mark, but another analysis suggests that changes in Twitter sentiment accurately predicted how Facebook’s share price turned throughout the day.

The crowdsourced prediction was inspired by a tweet from investor Chris Sacca, in which he wondered if a crowd could accurately predict the closing price of Facebook during its first day of trading. Programmer James Proud put up a website called Facebookipodayclosingprice.com to find out. He accepted 2,261 predictions from anyone who wanted to make one.

The result? Submissions, solicited mostly via Twitter, predicted on average that Facebook’s stock price would soar from the opening price of $38 to $54.

The reality? Facebook’s stock gained a measly $0.23 during its first day of trading.

Only 26 people correctly predicted that Facebook’s stock would close at about $38, and crowdsourced predictions unsurprisingly gained no clout as tools for predicting stock prices as a result of the experiment.

Another analysis, however, says that Twitter sentiment correlated with how the price turned throughout the day.

In an examination of tweets that were published Friday related to the Facebook IPO, Social media data firm DataSift found that every time the volume of negative comments increased, Facebook’s share price dropped within 20 minutes. Conversely, when positive sentiment increased, the share price rose within a short timeframe.

But don’t start basing your trading decisions on Twitter sentiment just yet.

Though the analysis is not the first to find a link between Twitter data and stock price, its authors aren’t willing to call it any more than “an interesting correlation between Twitter sentiment and stock price fluctuations.”

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, blackred

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The Mashable community engaged in a variety of articles this week, resulting in solid discussions and debates in the comments.

Topics that sparked conversation included a new MacBook Pro rumor, an Avengers adoption joke, as well as the long-awaited Facebook IPO.

One commenter, KiTTGT, wrote how a slim profile and Retina display on the next MacBook Pro could be limiting, depending on the features. On a different story, Alex Elman, showed great interest in the Teachers Pay Teachers platform by commenting with a strong opinion to oppose lesson plan sharing for teachers.

Other readers took a liking to Facebook’s IPO, which is the second largest ever in the U.S., next to that of Visa. Esteban Contreras gave his opinion on the acquisitions Facebook made prior to its IPO, such as Instagram and Glancee.

At Mashable, we’re always on the lookout for thoughtful, insightful comments that add to our stories or further the discussion. Take a look at this week’s top comments and let us know what you think of the readers’ opinions.

Foursquare Friend Requests

Mashable asked people in the Get Glue community if they friend people on Foursquare they don't know. They responded with great comments and insights on how they use Foursquare. Comment originally seen on: Mashable's Get Glue Page

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If you haven’t commented on a Mashable article before, check out Mashable Follow, our content curation and social tool, as well as our comment guidelines to learn more. We’d love for you to join the conversation.

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Your photo speaks volumes about you: make sure those volumes are filled in with your hopes, aspirations, personality and talent and not the result of a haphazard occurrence that you have been too careless to display. Your quality picture will pay off big: and the more visible you are, the higher the return. So get ready to collect.

Corporate blogs are especially challenging given multiple contributors and groups participating. Whether you’re an individual starting a blog, a start-up, mid-size company or large corporation the steps to promote follow the same path. Promotions for blogging and how you treat the blog are woven together. I’ll outline overarching promotions tactics you can employ to promote your blog and gain wider visibility.

Facebook just released new posting functionality for offers that will help businesses post deals to their Timeline for fans to redeem.   Currently the functionality being released is to a limited number of Facebook Business Pages, but will eventually be available to select types of businesses.  We have seen this option become available for clients with Local Business Pages and it is currently free to use.  Facebook has created a help section to guide administrators and fans through the of

When an online visitor logs in to your website using one of their social networks, their social profile data and login behavior are captured, aggregated, and ... presented in a clear Google-inspired analytics dashboard. The analytics provide insight into your clients’ social profiles and tell you: who is logging in, sharing, sending referrals back to your website as well as through which network.

The English Premier League is arguably the world’s most popular sports organization, and this season saw explosive growth off the pitch in the realm of social media.

Manchester City snagged its first English title in 44 years last weekend to cap off another dramatic EPL season. To recap how the league developed digitally this year, Mashable hunted down some stats. We also consulted Sean Walsh, whose blog Digital Football is a leading source on the intersection between English soccer and social media.

“EPL clubs have been criticized in the past for their out-of-date approach to social media in comparison to the youthful and creative tactics employed by U.S. franchises in the NBA and NFL,” Walsh, who’s interviewed the digital directors of several top European clubs over the past year, told Mashable in an email. “But the 2011-2012 season has seen the rise of social media in ‘the beautiful game,’ and Premier League clubs have finally begun to invest in it.”

Walsh says EPL clubs added a total of more than 17 million Facebook fans over the course of the season. In total, the league has almost 60 million Facebook likes — all the more impressive when you consider England’s total population is just over 50 million people.

So far, both the league and its individual teams have a much stronger presence on Facebook than on Twitter, where clubs count a combined following of less than 4.5 million. But the EPL’s presence is growing rapidly on Twitter as well as Facebook — Walsh counts a 126% increase in followers league-wide since last season.

SEE ALSO: How Social Media Is Changing Sports [INFOGRAPHIC]

Premier League side Chelsea was also involved in a piece of Twitter history recently. Its win over FC Barcelona in last month’s Champions League semifinal set a Twitter sports record of 13,684 tweets per second, eclipsing the previous record set by the most recent Super Bowl. Chelsea takes on Bayern Munich in the Champions League final this Saturday, so we’ll see if it can make Twitter history again.

Liverpool, meanwhile, became the first Premier League team to promote itself using Pinterest. The team stocked boards with historic photos, fan gear, old uniformas and memorabilia. Pinterest has become one of the newest ways sports teams around the world are seeking to leverage social media.

Among Walsh’s favorite individual digital EPL moments this year: Manchester City launching a YouTube partnership taking steps toward integrating fans’ in-person and social media experiences; Queens Park Rangers owner Tony Fernandes using Twitter to ask fans which players they wanted the club to acquire; and midfielder Joey Barton using promoted tweets to apologize to fans for being thrown out of a match.

How do you think English soccer stacks up to other pro sports in leveraging social media? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy toksuede, Flickr.

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Mark Zuckerberg

Zuck, who owns 503.6 million shares, is now worth $19.14 billion, though his personal fortune surpassed the $20 billion mark several times.

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OK, so Facebook’s IPO may have seemed like a lot of sound and fury for 23 cents, but there will still doubtlessly be some celebrating in Menlo Park Friday night.

That’s because a lot of Facebookers got fabulously rich on Friday. True, it probably would have been an even more festive occasion if the stock had hit the $54 that Twitter had predicted, but Facebook’s measly gain on its first day of trading was still worth $115.7 million to Mark Zuckerberg.

Here’s why Zuck and some other big Facebook investors still have cause to pop the Champagne.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, AUDINDesign

More About: bono, Facebook, facebook ipo, Greylock partners, mark zuckerberg, sean parker

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1. Ringing the Bell

It was a big week for Facebook, which rang in the Nasdaq bell from its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook shares started trading at $42 each on Nasdaq around 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning, under the symbol “FB.”

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This week awarded us a colorful new collection of GIFs. Here’s a look at Mashable‘s picks for the top GIFs of the week, everything from the Facebook crew to a Donna Summer tribute to a dog/bunny combo.

SEE ALSO: Top GIFs of the Week — May 10

Which GIF is your favorite for the week? Let us know in the comments below if we missed any good ones.

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Facebook closed its first day of public trading valued at $105.19 billion, making it worth almost exactly as much as PepsiCo, which is valued at $106.5 billion.

At more than $100 billion, Facebook doesn’t quite make it into the leagues of Coca-Cola, worth $167 billion, or Wal-Mart, worth $212 billion. Nor does it yet compete with tech giants Google, worth $196 billion; Microsoft, worth $246 billion; or Apple, worth $496 billion.

However, being the largest Internet IPO in history does get you somewhere. We’ve rounded up five companies you probably perceive to be enormous, which are now worth less than 8-year-old Facebook.

SEE ALSO: 6 Reasons Why the Facebook IPO Fell Flat

Take a look at these smaller-than-Facebook companies. Are you surprised by how big Facebook is compared to these other companies? Sound off in the comments.

McDonald's

Worth $91 billion

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, shaunl

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What Is an IPO?

What exactly is an IPO? What are the risks to a company in going public? What are the legal requirements?

If you find the business terms and market lingo confusing, check out our explainer video, which breaks down an IPO in plain language.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, woraput

More About: brands, Facebook, facebook ipo, networth, valuation

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Mashable’s mRank is presented by Samsung’s SMART cameras. Simply shoot your image and share it instantly on your social sites, using built-in Wi-Fi. It’s the camera for how we share pictures today.

CBS’s hit show How I Met Your Mother not only brought in strong ratings this week for its season finale, it also raked in significant social buzz online in the first half of the week, according to mRank, Mashable’s social media chatter-tracker. However, buzz at the end of the week belonged to American Idol, which trimmed its contestant pool to the final two on Thursday.

With many TV series wrapping up their seasons with explosive finales this week, viewers have been turning to the social web to post reactions and discuss the latest plot advancements. Leading the pack in social buzz is How I Met Your Mother, whose season finale not only welcomed a new baby but also gave more details as to who Barney (played by Neil Patrick Harris) will marry.

Other strong social buzz performers during the first half of the week included The Big Bang Theory, The Voice, Bones, Game of Thrones, WWE Raw and American Idol.

Mashable’s mRank leaderboards track the most buzzed-about TV shows across the social web. mRank’s technology analyzes certain terms — in this case TV show names or words associated with a certain title — and creates a leaderboard based on the volume of conversation around that show on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Mashable has leaderboards for various events and topics — from movies to music — and more will pop up for events, such as the Olympics, in the future.

Although reality TV show The Voice dropped from first last week to the sixth most-discussed earlier this week, its finale was held a week prior to many other finales. Fans of the show took to social networks to react to the crowning of Jermaine Paul, Alicia Keys’ former back-up singer and the mentee of country star Blake Shelton, as “the Voice.”

The top ten also featured Mad Men (despite its lack of a season finale), newcomer series The New Girl and perennial favorite Dancing with the Stars. Meanwhile, Saturday Night Live — which is the 14th most-discussed show online — received a lot of buzz earlier in the week when former cast member Will Ferrell re-joined the team to host the season wrap-up. In addition, a clip of celebrities from the show’s digital shorts returned on Saturday night to celebrate the series’ 100th sketch, with the help of Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Natalie Portman and Michael Bolton. The video went viral and initiated a lot of online chatter.

Toward the end of the week, American Idol shot up to the top of the mRank list, pushing How I Met Your Mother down to the ninth spot. If early buzz for American Idol’s finale is any indication, we suspect it will be back on top yet again next week.

Other strong performers toward the end of the week include Bones, Criminal Minds, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family and Game of Thrones.

mRank 5/16/2012

mRank 5/18/2012

mRank presented by Samsung

Mashable’s mRank is presented by Samsung’s SMART cameras. Simply shoot your image and share it instantly on your social sites, using built-in Wi-Fi. It’s the camera for how we share pictures today.

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Your Google email account is changing — it’s getting even more social.

A new Google update will make “people front and center in Gmail” — or rather the people you know who signed up for Google+.

These updates will further integrate Google+ — the search engine’s social network — into Gmail. Now when users search for an email address, contact information from Google+ profiles will show automatically. This means Google+ profiles are pushed to the forefront including profile pictures, emails, chat prompts and phone numbers. This could be a solution for Google+’s lackluster user engagement.

SEE ALSO: Google News Gets Deeper Ties to Google+

A company product manager Itamar Gilad described the new personalized changes in an official blog post.

“These updates are helping us to provide a more consistent, beautiful experience across all of our products,” he wrote. “Quick access to contact details will be rolling out to everyone today. To take advantage of circles and more in Gmail, you’ll need to join Google+.”

Google+ circles are also finding their way into your email. You’ll be able to filter messages by circles of friends. To see how, watch the video above.

Updates like these are a part of Google’s master plan to incorporate Google+ into all facets of the company’s products. Google unveiled Google Search Plus Your World in January.

Do you think Google+ is an effective directory? Tell us which social network you turn to for contact information — for friends or strangers.

Thumbnail courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter.

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Back in 2006, Facebook was only a shadow of the company it would become, tech giant Yahoo was attempting to buy the social network for $1 billion — and Dan Rosenweig was the man who got Zuckerberg’s handshake on that offer.

Rosenweig the Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo from 2002 to 2007 — Facebook founder to acquire the company — an offer which Zuckerberg accepted at first, but declined after Yahoo lowered the price.

“I’d like to think I was way ahead of the curve of most people, because they only had four million users and zero revenue and I did offer them a billion dollars,” Rosenweig said during a brief conversation with a group of journalists in the parking lot of Facebook HQ before heading off to a scheduled interview.

“I assure you as ahead of the curve I thought I might have been, I don’t think anybody would have imagined all of this,” he said shortly after Facebook’s stock went up for sale Friday.

Zuckerberg reportedly accepted Yahoo’s $1 billion offer with a handshake. Yahoo’s stock tumbled shortly after, and the company lowered its offer to $850 million — an offer which Zuckerberg refused. Yahoo had reportedly separated into two camps on the issue, one that believed in the future of Facebook, and another that thought a $1 billion investment in a network that was currently making no money was unwise.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Opens at $42, Valued at $116.6 Billion

Rosenweig built a relationship with Zuckerberg during the time Yahoo was considering the acquisition, and impressed him with his forward-thinking. When most people were still thinking about building single applications, Zuckerberg was thinking about building a platform.

“He was talking about a platform before platform was cool,” says Rosenweig. “He had a vision for connecting people of all kinds.”

At the time, Facebook was only available to college students — and only allowed them to connect to students at their own school.

“He had pretty big ambitions, and I think it’s pretty clear he was way ahead of everybody –- and still is frankly.”

Rosensweig described Facebook’s move to Menlo Park as representative of a rebirth in the area. “When I moved here 10 years ago this building was Sun Micro, and it’s sort of the changing of guard. Menlo went from Sun Micro, to being sold to Oracle, to now resurrecting it as Facebook.”

SEE ALSO: The Early Hours of Facebook HQ on IPO Day

Would Facebook would be following in the footsteps of the building’s previous tenant 10 years from now and moving out? “My guess is only if they need a bigger building,” Rosenweig said. The number of developers growing up today would only help grow companies like Facebook in the future, he added.

“It’s an absolutely wonderful time to be in Silicon Valley … A lot more of these companies are generating revenue. A lot more are generating profits. That wasn’t the case 10 years ago.”

More About: Facebook, facebook ipo, ipo, Yahoo

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firewheel

“Hacking NASDAQ”

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While the rest of the world was relegated to watching Mark Zuckerberg ring the NASDAQ opening bell online, Facebook staffers turned the late night and early morning event into an all-out party at their headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

Mimosas were flowing, house music playing, and just about every Facebook staffer was recording the occasion on their mobile devices — and not surprisingly, given the recent acquisition, they favored Instagram.

We’ve collected the best of them in the gallery above. How do you rate the Facebook staffers’ Instagram skills? Which snapshot is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook shares started trading at $42 a share on Nasdaq around 11:30 a.m. Friday morning under the symbol “FB.” At the beginning of trading, Zuckerberg was worth $21 billion. Currently, the stock is trading less than a dollar above the IPO price of $38.

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Zef Zikolla, Facebook

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On its first day as a public company, Facebook‘s stock closed at $38.23 a share.

That’s up $0.23 a share from its IPO price but down from the stock’s opening trading price of $42.

The stock, which trades on NASDAQ using the symbol “FB,” was supposed to enter the market at 11:00 a.m. ET. Instead, it was delayed by more than 30 minutes, reportedly due to overloaded demand on NASDAQ’s systems.

Some analysts have remarked that the trading delay ultimately hurt Facebook’s opening day.

SEE ALSO: 6 Reasons Why the Facebook IPO Fell Flat

While many are quick to point the finger at Facebook’s relatively flat performance as a sign that the company has “failed,” we think Twitter’s Director of Platform, Ryan Sarver put it best:

I love how analysts are saying “facebook disappoints on it’s opening day”. IT’S WORTH $105B IN 8 YEARS!! Nothing disappointing about that

— Ryan Sarver (@rsarver) May 18, 2012

In the comments, let us know your thoughts on Facebook’s opening day performance.

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Zef Zikolla, Facebook

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Fresh off its first day on the Nasdaq, Facebook has acquired another company: Karma. An app for “in-the-moment gifting,” Karma lets you send everything from a bottle of wine to a fuzzy teddy bear to friends via SMS, email, and Facebook.

The way Karma works is pretty simple. Using the app, you can browse through a virtual storefront to pick out a gift. Karma has partnered with companies including with Hulu, Gund, MoMa and Spotify –- so there’s a pretty decent selection of gifts.

Once you’re found the perfect gift, you can create a virtual card and send your present to your recipient via text, email, or a message on his or her Facebook wall. As the person receiving the gift, you can choose to accept it -– and provide Karma with an address where you would like your gift shipped -– or you can trade the gift in for something else in Karma’s store. You can even choose to give the monetary value of the gift to charity.

Mashable met with Karma CEO Lee Linden in March. At the time, Linden said that the majority of the gifts sent from the app were actually done via SMS.

“The average response rate for an SMS gift is less than 60 seconds,” said Linden. “Email is four to five hours. On Facebook, it’s a day.”

SEE ALSO: Need to Send a Gift But Don’t Know the Address? Karma App Can Help

One interesting aspect of the app is its Facebook integration. Karma reads through messages on your Facebook wall, and alerts you to specific events where you might want to send a gift. For instance, if a friend was receiving several “Congratulations!” messages on his or her wall due to the birth of a new child, Karma will let you know so you can send a gift. Karma also stays on top of things like birthdays and new jobs.

“We’re thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook.” Karma execs said in a blog post. “The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook’s platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say…only good things will follow.”

More About: App, Facebook, facebook ipo, karma

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Longtime informal social media buddies Twitter and NASCAR are making things official for next month’s Pocono 400 race. It’s Twitter’s first official partnership with a sports league, and may hint at a larger shift to come for the microblogging platform that has become a hit with sports fans in particular.

The Pocono 400 partnership will revolve around the #NASCAR hashtag, according to a joint press conference Twitter and NASCAR held Friday.

“During the race, we’ll curate accounts from the NASCAR universe and surface the best Tweets and photos from the drivers, their families, commentators, celebrities and other fans when you search #NASCAR on Twitter.com,” reads a post to the official company blog.

Omid Ashtari of Twitter’s business development team called the arrangement “part search algorithm and part editorial,” during Friday’s press conference.

More details about the partnership are expected to be revealed before Pocono happens on June 10.

Why NASCAR? Ashtari said one reason is races draw fans of dozens of drivers at a time, as opposed to just a couple teams, which will give Twitter a chance to experiment and learn rapidly about how to curate tweets and step into a more editorial role.

NASCAR fans are very active on Twitter and the league promotes social media use among its drivers. Driver Brad Keselowski made a classic Twitter sports moment earlier this year when he tweeted photos from inside his car on the Daytona 500 racetrack during a fire delay, gaining more than 100,000 followers in about two hours.

It’s hard not to see the NASCAR partnership as a harbinger of future official deals with other sports leagues, as well as a more general shift toward an editorial emphasis by Twitter. The company is looking for at least one sports fan to take on a new editorial role.

Sports are a natural starting point if Twitter wants to become more of a media company across the board. Pro sports moments dominate the tweets-per-second record book, and the network has become a go-to destination for breaking news and fan discussion. The company’s famous avian logo is even named after an NBA Hall of Famer.

Would you welcome editorial input from Twitter for major events? Let us know in the comments.

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This short and sweet B2B case study discussed by Sandy Carter of IBM shows us some numbers on how Premier, an alliance of 2500 community hospitals, leverages their online community. Awesome.

Well, that was anticlimactic.

After all the hullabaloo about Facebook’s IPO, this is how it ends, with a mere $0.23 jump in share price? That kind of movement is what happens after Procter & Gamble announces a more absorbent type of Pampers.

Yet it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Facebook’s opening day on the NASDAQ had all the excitement of a Matlock rerun. While no one knows exactly why Facebook landed with such a thud, there are a handful of good reasons that the company got poked by Wall Street. Among them:

1. It Was Priced Just Right

Call it the Goldilocks theory. This assumes that a lot of thought went into that $38 price, and the reason that the stock didn’t double is that the esteemed underwriters at Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs did their job right and accurately priced the stock.

That, however, depends on what your definition of “accurately” is. James Brau, professor of finance at Brigham Young University, says that over the past 40 years of IPOs, the average first-day pop is 18%.

So, if Facebook was looking to perform along those lines, it should have priced its shares in the low 30s.

In addition, underwriters don’t aim for a flat performance on the first day because of a practice called “leaving money on the table,” which rewards institutional investors for getting on board. Though that looks like a kickback of sorts, Brau says there’s no clear-cut reason why IPOs always factor leaving money on the table in.

“There are at least 50 different academic studies I know of that that have 35 different theories,” Brau says.

One popular theory is that it’s a way of rewarding such investors for honesty. The argument goes like this: During an IPO road show, the company and bankers are looking for an accurate read on what investors plan to spend.

If such investors didn’t know that they would be rewarded for telling the truth, then they would intentionally low-ball the amount they intend to buy at. If an institutional investor thought that the stock should be worth $10, say, then they might say they’ll spend $8 to enjoy the ride on the opening day.

2. It’s NASDAQ’s Fault

NASDAQ bungled Facebook’s opening, not offering the stock until 11:30 am EST, 30 minutes later than planned. In addition, the stock exchange didn’t finish filling orders for the stock for about two-and-a-half hours. Kevin Pleines, an equity market analyst with Birinyi Associates, says the resulting confusion didn’t do Facebook’s stock any favors.

“It threw it a bit of a curve,” Pleines says. “It may have held it back a little bit.”

3. Investors Are Wary of Social Media Stocks

The media may love the story of the scrappy twenty-something building a $100 billion company from his Harvard dorm, but investors have seen this movie before. Of the 19 social media IPOs of 2011, 82.4% were trading below their opening-day prices by year’s end. Only three were above their opening price.

4. It’s GM’s Fault

General Motors landed a well-timed blow against Facebook on Tuesday, when reports surfaced that the company planned to pull all its advertising from Facebook because it wasn’t working.

Though no other advertisers appear to have followed suit, the move didn’t reassure investors who were already nervous about Facebook’s first-quarter revenue slide and its admitted inability to transition its ad model to mobile.

5. It’s Overvalued

Facebook’s valuation of $100 billion-plus, like most valuations, is based on expectations of future performance. In Facebook’s case, these expectations are wildly optimistic. After all, at its current valuation, Facebook is worth more than McDonald’s.

The Golden Arches, with restaurants all over the globe, close-to 100% brand recognition and a proven business model, posted $27 billion in revenues last year and a $5.5 billion profit. Facebook made $1 billion on $3.7 billion in revenues.

Not surprisingly, 79% of investors in a recent Bloomberg poll thought that Facebook was overvalued. As Espen Robak, the president of Pluris Valuation Advisors, told The Atlantic, Facebook’s valuation is plausible because of the company’s tremendous reach.

But, as Robak told the publication, no one knows how Facebook will be able to monetize that reach.

“Think of it this way,” said Robak. “Google has a pretty standard price-earnings ratio right now — around 15 to 20. That’s where Facebook will ultimately have to get. They need vastly larger profit.

“How many more ads can they sell? Four times more in the next year? I don’t think so. They have to get revenues from somewhere else.”

Robak thinks that maybe — just maybe — Facebook will be able to tap into its user data to provide a new solution to advertisers.

6. Retail Investors Are Taking a Wait-And-See Attitude

If you’re an average joe, you probably couldn’t get your hands on a share of pre-IPO Facebook stock. So, the logical thing to do is wait until the hype dies down and then assess the stock. Pleines’ research shows that waiting at least a month is a good idea.

According to Pleines’ data, no matter how well the recent social media IPOs did on opening day, their stocks were still down — across the board — after the first month.

But it’s not just a social media thing: We may not remember it well, but Google’s stock languished for a month or more after its debut. “While Google did not trade lower in its first month of trading, it did trade back its original open price of $100,” Pleines wrote in a recent note to clients. “But after that it never looked back, trading as high as $196 over the next three months.”

In other words, the question of Facebook’s true value wasn’t answered on Friday. In all likelihood, we won’t know for a few months at least.

What do you think Facebook is really worth? Let us know in the comments.

SEE ALSO: Facebook’s IPO Roadshow: We Give You the Video Highlights

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, EdStock

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