Buying Facebook Stock: Shares Jump to $42, Twitter Weighs In

Buying Facebook stock? Apparently you’re not the only one. Everywhere you turned today, people were either praising, cursing, or analyzing the Facebook IPO. The fantastic stable of writers at WebProNews have been covering the story non-stop today, as have many others who’ve been overwhelmingly interested in how today’s initial trading would unfold on Wall Street.

After a nail-biting 30-minute delay — shares were supposed to start trading at 11am — the dogs were off to the races. Although shares started out at $38 a piece, the price rose to $42 as the day progressed. Towards the early afternoon, the stocks were trading at $41, which means that Facebook now has a total valuation of $112 billion dollars. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I can even count that high without nodding off and drooling on my desk.

“It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been,” Renaissance Capital analyst Nick Einhorn told the Associated Press. “But I don’t think we should view it as a failure.”

This is a sentiment that’s shared with a lot of people. When your IPO is preceded by an enormous amount of coverage from just about every single corner of the civilized world, living up to the hype can prove extremely difficult. Hoodie aficionado Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, seems to be handling the stress pretty well. On the surface, anyway.

“Right now this all seems like a big deal. Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing, our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected,” the CEO explained. “In the past eight years, all of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of and I can’t wait to see what you guys all do going forward.

Following the ringing of the Nasdaq bell this morning, everyone on the planet was suddenly a seasoned financial analyst, taking to various social media outlets to share their business savvy with the world. Twitter, as always, proved to be a fantastic resource of information for those who want to make life choices based on the 140-character advice dished out by complete strangers.

To check out our complete coverage of the Facebook IPO, swing by this location.