The historic day came and went as Facebook, eight years-old, with more than 901 million members, roughly 1 in 8 people on Earth, went public, issuing actual stock certificates in a retro move. As of 3:07 pm EST, Facebook had traded 460 million shares, setting a record for trading volume for a U.S. stock the day of its IPO. Facebook's stock opened around $43 and quickly slipped to under $39, after pricing on Thursday at $38 a share.

The social giant chose Nasdaq over NYSE Euronext, not surprising as the former is more closely associated with Silicon Valley. Due to a technical delay at Nasdaq caused by the sheer volume of share orders which began at 10:45 am EST, the stock opening took place at 11:30 am instead of 11:00 am, with some 82 million shares traded in the first 30 seconds. Seven minutes after the opening, 110 million shares had traded, with the stock eventually reaching a high of $45 a share. All in all, the highly anticipated public debut proved more of a whimper than the bang that was expected.Continue reading...

Facebook heads into IPO today with record pricing and a strategy to raise money, not hype, WSJ says — but also with persistent questions among brand marketers about the value of advertising, among other challenges. Meanwhile, average investors face long odds on a big Facebook payday, which will make Bono the richest rock star and Mark Zuckerberg richer than Google's co-founders.

Yahoo names new executive team as Alibaba deal apparently looms.

HP plans to slash workforce by up to 30,000, WSJ says.

Bud Light is drawing online buzz from Millennials.

Amazon to sell ads on Kindle Fire welcome screen.

Barneys New York relaunches website.

Coca-Cola bests Pom Wonderful in court in latest round of long-running labeling dispute.Continue reading...

Facebook may feel it has addressed privacy time and time again during its brief history, including recently addressing concerns about app privacy with the launch of Timeline.

But on the eve of its historic $96 billion (up to $104 billion) initial public offering, when it is expected to sell shares on NASDAQ starting Friday, Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan hosted a live event today concerning the latest changes to its privacy policy in response to an audit by the Irish government.Continue reading...

Yahoo CEO and five board members step down as Ross Levinsohn named interim CEO and Scott Thompson discloses he has cancer.

Apple drops "4G" from UK iPad ads and reportedly bringing retina display to MacBook Pro while Foxconn prepares for Apple TV production.

Facebook co-founder renounces U.S. citizenship to avoid $600M in taxes as almost-over IPO roadshow focuses on mobile and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wants in. (Also, wish Mark Zuckerberg a happy 28th birthday today.)

ABC bids adieu to Desperate Housewives.

Ally mortgage unit files for bankruptcy.

Avon weighs sweetened offer from Coty. (Update: Coty withdrew its offer late Monday.)Continue reading...

In a truly social move, Facebook has added a timeline tool that lets its 161 million members in the U.S. and 30 million U.K. members share their organ donor status with friends in order to facilitate connecting potential donors and recipients.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News for Good Morning America that aired today on Mayday appropriately, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the life-saving commitment: "What we hope will happen is that by just having this simple tool, we think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. That can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that's out there." 

The plan — outlined in a co-bylined piece by Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on the ABC News website — is to leverage social media to encourage more organ donors. With the new Facebook feature, users can register as organ, eye and tissue donors and link to the donor registry in their state as well as post videos or status updates about their decision to be a donor as well as indicate their wish to donate upon death.Continue reading...

If nothing else, it has to be a lot of fun being associated with businesses owned by Virgin. Behind them all, whether it's Virgin Bingo or Virgin Hotels or another of the myriad Virgin-branded businesses, you can always bank (literally) on the sometimes loony but always shrewd iconic entrepreneur, Richard Branson, Virgin's brander-in-chief. Don't think of them as brand extensions so much as Branson extensions — reflections of the Virgin founder's personality, passions and interests.

You can pretty much depend on Branson's trademark wit and showmanship in the promotion of a Virgin brand. The latest campaign from Virgin Mobile USA is testament to that, going so far as to depict what it must have been like "growing up Branson."Continue reading...

As highly, highly anticipated, Facebook filed today for an initial public offering of stock to raise $5 billion, the most for an web IPO since Google. Finally revealing a peek at its business drivers, highlights from its SEC filing include that Zynga accounted for 12% of Facebook revenue last year, when its net income and revenues were $1 billion on $3.71 billion.

The site's 845 million monthly active users (MAU) as of Dec. 31st include 179 million in North America (US and Canada); 212 million in Asia; 229 million in Europe; and 225 million in the rest of the world. FB, as its stock ticker will read, sees Brazil (which grew 268% last year, to 37 million MAU) and India (which grew 132% to 26 million last year) as key regions of growth. Its risk factors include mobile, government, slowing growth and Google+.Continue reading...

As Facebook prepares to file its IPO papers any time now, in what is anticipated to be among the biggest debuts ever for a U.S. company, to be handled by Morgan Stanley, “The deal, seen as defining moment for the latest Web investing boom, could raise as much as $10 billion and value the social network between $75 billion and $100 billion.”

With a pre-IPO valuation of $84 billion and a reported IPO target to raise $5 billion, is this the start of another tech bubble? Dealogic lists only Visa, General Motors and AT&T Wireless as higher ranked in U.S. IPO’s than Facebook’s pending deal, making it the largest Internet offering since Google, which in 2004 raised $1.9 billion at a $23 billion valuation.

Driven by dominance in the online display-advertising market, Facebook’s share in 2011 reached 27.9% according to comScore, in advance of Yahoo with 11%, and Microsoft and Google each with less than 5%.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s mettle will be tested anew as his reluctance to open his company to public scrutiny and influence is outweighed by regulation requiring a company with more than 500 shareholders to report their financials.Continue reading...