Respected mutual fund company T. Rowe Price is – at least to some degree – becoming a social media believer. Filings released by the organization reveal that it recently invested an impressive-sounding $190.5 million in Facebook and another $72 million in Zynga.
That makes for a total of $262.5 million (or $297.9 million if you include the $35.4 million investment T. Rowe also made in Angie’s List). Not exactly pocket change from the average person’s perspective, in other words, and in the corporate world, that could buy many firms outright.
Plus, further demonstrating its interest in social media, T. Rowe has invested in Groupon and Twitter before.
The slight catch is that, in terms of all the money T. Rowe manages – something like $482 billion – $300 million really doesn’t amount to much. And the mutual fund company’s not trying to make (or let) any investors load up on Facebook’s stock.
Mary Pilon, who was one of the first people to report the organization’s expenditures, explained, “The investments . . . are a drop in the bucket for T. Rowe, which says it is managing that risk by keeping the investments to a small percentage of each fund’s holdings. None of the funds has even a full percent of its holdings tied up in Facebook, for example.”
So make of the move(s) what you will. It’s possible to spin them more than one way. At least a few investors are sure to follow T. Rowe’s lead and attempt to hand a little money over to Facebook, Zynga, or some other social media company, however.
