[squeed]

You know what? Good. A stock that explodes after the IPO means it was priced too low, and the company didn't raise a fair amount of capital.

Facebook is obviously smart enough to think for the long term. I don't trust the financial machinery to do that.

[wh-uws]

Whats interesting about this though is your average person doesn't have that perspective.

These companies (most companies not just tech companies or just facebook) are largely black boxes to them.

They aren't thinking about how there are lots of hardworking people at them who deserve to be rewarded for their work.

I've been thinking a lot recently about this. How even myself I didn't really have a good perspective on how a company's stock price / ipo relates to them.

But with facebook its different though. I've known about facebook since I joined it in 2006 as a senior in high school.

And now I know people who work there. I even have a friend who works for Morgan Stanley.

So now im in a unique position to really understand where these numbers come from and the value they do or don't represent.

If you never learn that kind of stuff; either on your own, from others who have seen it, or don't have the benefit of the collective knowledge of a community like hacker news.

All you would have is:

"High stock price good, low stock price bad"

And the rabbit hole is actually much deeper than that.

Like in this instance even though the stock price didn't rise greatly it was actually good for the company. Because that's what an intial public offering is supposed to be about. A way for the company to raise capital. If the stock price doubles after that its all well and good but the company itself doesn't get to benefit from that aside from good press.

And I think a lot of people keep taking for granted that facebook is not public now because it wants to be but because it has to be, but thats a whole other conversation

[jlgreco]

Surely there should be a middle road between FB's IPO and "exploding". Perhaps 'preforming as expected'?

[adgar]

Here's how real people think about a hyped, flop of an IPO:

People don't like the feeling of being sold something for more than it's worth. We call that being "ripped off," and most folks don't take too kindly to it. I believe you described this as getting a "fair amount."

People also don't like the folks who rip off other people. It's kind of a dick move to rip someone off. Those folks tend to do quite well, yes. That's FB in this case, who as you note made out just swell.

People especially resent it when those guys get incredibly wealthy by ripping off millions of people.

> Facebook is obviously smart enough to think for the long term. I don't trust the financial machinery to do that.

I think we can all agree - there's nobody we can trust more than Facebook to rip us off properly.

[tedunangst]

??? Who are the millions of people who got ripped off by Facebook?

[mark_integerdsv]

I'm with you.

It still baffles me how anyone could think that this IPO was about anything but making vulgar amounts of money for Facebook.

I guess the label is now more accurate than ever: "...dumb fucks."

[acdha]

What IPO isn't about making money for the company? Only the VC pump-and-dump scams, not anything you want to be part of

[adgar]

Most companies' IPOs don't include going to great lengths to successfully offload far more of their shares at a significantly higher price than the shares could sustain.

There's a big difference between leaving money on the table and riding the hype wave for all its worth. Plenty of room for reasonable compromise.