It’s been a long climb back, but Facebook shares currently sit at over $30, up around $1.40 as of now. That’s an increase of nearly 5%.

Of course, “back” is a relative term. To be truly “back” to IPO levels, Facebook would beed to hit their opening mark, which was $38. But I’m sure there are plenty of people that are pretty happy to see Facebook crack $30 for the first time in nearly six months.

As you know, it’s been a rocky road for Facebook’s stock price since the May IPO. In August, after weeks of sliding, the price hit its all-time low of $17.55, less than 50% of the original price. It saw a significant bounce after the company’s Q3 earnings report, which saw $1.26 billion in revenues, a number that beat analysts’ expectations.

Since then, it’s been rising. Not entirely steadily, as there have been some hiccups. But now it sits at over $30:

Facebook has just sent out invites for a mysterious event scheduled for next week at their Menlo Park Campus. According to the invitations, they want us to “come and see what they’re building.”

Facebook will report their Q4 2012 earnings on January 30th.

According to an SEC filing, Sandberg sold 946,588 shares, which came out to be $26.2 million. The shares were sold at prices ranging from $27.30 to $27.90 a share. On Friday, that day that Sandberg sold off her shares, Facebook closed at $27.49 a share. Facebook stock has been on the rebound after going through a rough patch back a couple of months ago. At one point, the stock plunged into the high teens. At the IPO, the stock began at $38 a share.

Sandberg, who has served as Facebook COO since 2008, just recently became the first female member of the company’s Board of Directors.

This is Sandberg’s biggest Facebook stock sale ever. In her previous two sales, the Facebook COO sold $4.2 million worth of shares and $7.4 million.

You can see the official SEC filing here.

The document says:

We have adopted an “Insider Trading Policy” that governs the trading of our securities by our directors, officers, employees and consultants. Pursuant to the terms of that policy, all of our executive officers, as well as other members of our senior management team, are required to conduct any purchase or sale transactions in our securities through atrading plan established pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 (“Rule 10b5-1 Plans”) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Under the company’s current policies, Rule 10b5-1Plans can be entered into only during an open trading window and are subject to a “cooling-off” period before any sales or purchases may occur pursuant to such a Plan.

We understand that two of our non-employee directors, Marc Andreessen and Donald Graham, intend to satisfy taxes incurred in connection with the vesting or settlement of their RSU awards by effecting sales of our common stock. Any such sales will be conducted through Rule 10b5-1 Plans adopted in accordance with our securities trading policies.Other than such tax-related sales, Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Graham have no present intention to sell any shares of our common stock held by them personally.

As of the date of this report, Mark Zuckerberg has not adopted a Rule 10b5-1 Plan and has informed us that he has no intention to conduct any sale transactions in our securities for at least 12 months. Mr. Zuckerberg currently holds in aggregate approximately 444 million shares of Class B common stock as well as 60 million shares of Class Bcommon stock issuable upon the exercise of an option

TechCrunch shares the document in its entirety:

Facebook stock is up 3.5% at $18.35 as of the time of this writing.

Today, Facebook stock hit a new all-time low, at just over $18. As it stands, the price is fluctuating a couple of cents, hovering just over the $18 mark. This is well-under half of the initial offering price, which was $38.

BMO Capital’s Daniel Salmon told Bloomberg that “Checks on near-term paid media spending remain challenged.” In other words, Facebook is still struggling to monetize. Salmon cut his price estimate on shares from $25 to $15.

Although Facebook stock has been on a consistent and gradual decline since the IPO, share price really took a pounding earlier this month when the lockup period requiring shareholders to hold on to stock for a designated amount of time finally came to a close. Shortly after that, the price tanked to its then-lowest point $19.76.

A few days later, it finally crossed the $19 mark, touching down at $18.75. But it didn’t close at under $19. Today may be the first day that Facebook stock closes sub-$19.

As of the writing of this article, the price sits at $18.08, which is down 5.28% since its opening price today. It’s lowest point today was $18.06.

And this is Facebook’s stock price from the IPO day (May 18th) to now…

But here’s what you can do. You can help Zuckerberg hold on to his gold with a new Flash game entitled “Zuck Runner.”

The game, available at OneMoreLevel.com, runs on a simple premise – you have to collect as many coins as you can to save Facebook’s falling stock. Whiel doing that, you have to also avoid falling into crevices, stepping in lava, and various other impediments. Zuck is self-propelled across the screen, all you have to do is click your mouse to jump (holding it down longer makes Zuck jump higher).

You can joke all you want about Facebook’s epic stock plunge, but as it currently sits, some analysts say it’s finally worth a buy. As for Zuckerberg, he’s been more active on his site than usual of of late. Between pitching grilling apps and promoting the brand new, lightning-fast Facebook for iOS app, he’s keeping himself busy

[via All Facebook]

Today, Facebook stock hit $18.75, a new all-time low. As of the writing of this article it’s holding at around $19.00, which is exactly half of its $38 debut on May 18th.

Although CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly admitted that watching the stock price plunge was “painful,” he also said that he thinks the company’s “plans and investments will pay off in the long term.” And he’s occupying his time with the great American pastime – grilling meats.

“I updated my grilling app, iGrill, today and it now has Facebook integration that lets you see what other people are grilling right now around the world. Awesome. I’m making a Fred’s steak,” he said in a post Sunday evening.

The steak (seen above) is a specially marinated beef steak sold at Schaub’s Market in Palo Alto. Don’t worry – Zuckerberg’s not burning his steak. Fred steak is notoriously dark in color even when raw, thanks to the marinade (which is a secret).

Zuck’s endorsement of the iGrill app is his second recent app plug. His last post back in late June discussed how much fun he had playing the name-that-tune-like Facebook app SongPop. His Facebook subscribers know that he’s not a very frequent poster on his own site.

Grilling a Fred Steak goes against a pledge he made back in 2011 – to only eat meat that he killed himself. Zuckerberg notoriously issues new challenges to himself every year, and alas – it is a new year. In 2012, he said that he planned to write at least some code every day.

Earlier this afternoon, the price hit $19.82, which is barely half of the $38 at which the stock debuted. Save a few resurgences, the stock price has been in free-fall since Zuckerberg rang the opening bell and the company went public.

For the last hour, the price has been hovering around the $20 mark, shifting a few cents here and there:

The Wall Street Journal says that over the month of June, 21 different Fidelity funds sold off over 1.9 million public shares of Facebook stock. “To be sure, the sales represent a very small portion of the funds’ holdings. Also, 13 Fidelity funds bought 2.2 million shares of Facebook in June, though more than 1.3 million of those went to index funds, which passively track established stock indexes,” says the WSJ.

Still, it’s clear the confidence in Facebook’s ability hit a home run for investors is falling rapidly. By their own admission, Facebook must successfully learn to monetize mobile, something that they are currently working on with a renewed focus on creative ad strategies.

Just last week, Facebook reported their first earnings post-IPO. Although the company saw $1.18 billion in revenue, it was a loss (even though it beat expectations).

“The roadshow was certainly effective with the general public, mostly through coverage in the general media. I can’t really assess what it did with investment professionals. But there is widespread interest,” said Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil.

The increase comes in the wake of Zuckerberg’s decision to wear a hoodie to meetings with investors, which some claimed showed “immaturity” and a lack of seriousness about the company. However, with a recent poll showing that most people consider Facebook to be a passing fad, things could get complicated for the company down the road. To make matters worse, GM just pulled their ads from the website, claiming that their Facebook campaign wasn’t working. Clearly, this sort of news couldn’t have arrived at more inopportune moment.

Zuckerberg has also assured investors that he plans to address the company’s problems monetizing its mobile applications. According to reports, the company is making next to nothing in the market, though Facebook claims that it’s working on ways to generate revenue from those who use the site in a nontraditional manner.

If Facebook officially sets the price between $34 and $38, the company’s valuation could jump to an astronomical $100 billion. That is a lot of zeroes.

Apparently, all of that buzz is for naught – at least if you ask Twitter’s CEO.

In emails obtained by CNN, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had this to say about a possible IPO:

We don’t want to be public until we have very predictable quarterly earnings growth. We’re not ready to be a public company for a couple years.

This email correspondence comes in the form of a message to all Twitter staff regarding a limit imposed on the sharing of company shares. Apparently, a rule has existed for about a year that says nobody that holds Twitter stock can sell more than 20% of their shares.

Costolo wrote that Twitter has to “artificially limit the supply of stock being sold,” Costolo said, “There is one reasonable way to do this: Let everybody with vested common stock sell only some fraction of their shares.”

Twitter can avoid disclosing their financials if they keep it under 500 shareholders owning one class of equity shares. Once they hit that threshold, they don’t necessarily have to go public – but the majority do.

Now, it’s important to note that said email correspondence is from August 2011. Things can change in a matter of months. But Costolo’s private comments here seem to mirror his public comments about an IPO made only a few weeks ago at the All Things D “Dive Into Media” conference. There, Costolo refused to directly address the issue of a future IPO, but did say that Twitter’s “going to be really patient about the way [they] build the business,” adding that they “are trying to build a decades-long, lasting business.”

Marianne Oleson has been charged with 33 felony charges in the Winnebago County Court. The prosecutors say the woman claimed to own shares of Facebook stock and swindled at least 4 people in to buying the fake stock. One complaint states that one man gave Oleson 28,000 dollars in cash money in exchange for “legitimate looking” documents.

Officials say Oleson acquired the documents from a Florida company that owns private stock of the social network giant by telling the company she was interested in buying 1 million dollars worth of shares.

Oleson has many aliases including the last names of Jansen, Milock and Maloney. Randy Stafford, the aforementioned man that was swindled says he was indeed “swindled”. Stafford performed construction on Oleson’s home and after she couldn’t afford to pay him, she offered him the stock in exchange; Stafford said:

“I think it’s a great opportunity, it’s a growing business so on and so forth.”

Reportedly, 18,00 dollars was in payment for work he did on the home and stafford payed an additional 10,000 dollars for the stocks themselves. Stafford went on to say:

“I’m interested in my options and investments so you don’t have to work as hard and make it a lot easier money for my kids and family.”

Stafford went on to say that “something didn’t feel right”; seems his instincts were correct; according to the victim, Oleson had bought up to 1 million dollars worth of the faux stock.

Police officials say that stafford wasn’t the only one duped. Jeff Bellin of the Winnebago County Sheriff’s office says:

“There were other victims initially identified and from there, it just grew.”

A criminal complaint lists 5 victims including Stafford that purchased or had the fake stock given to them as a gift. Bellin feels that there may be more victims out there too. To add insult to injury, Oleson is facing marijuana possession charges on top of her previous charges.