Here's the deal, the stock price was way over priced. If they had priced it lower then the underwriters wouldn't have had to step in repeatedly to prop it up in order to maintain the $38 share price. Without the intervention of the underwriters the stock would have plummeted.

What we're seeing is the beginning of a market correction that will adjust the price to a real world value. The underwriters can only support it's value in the market for so long before they are no longer able to keep the artificial value where it's at.

At $38, Facebook's price-to-earnings ratio was more than four times Google's. Google's posting revenue and profit than were 10 times higher than Facebook. Google also had a long term strategic plan for the money they raised from their IPO. As far as I know Facebook had no public plan for the use of the funds raised during the IPO, it seemed more like a get rich plan for the people (and banks) who held stock.

Long term I'm sure Facebook will rebound in the market, but it's going to be months before the actual price of the stock has been determined by the market and we know for sure.

No, they didn't. If they had nailed it then they wouldn't be stepping in continually to keep the price from plummeting below $38. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time

Check out the NASDAQ chart; http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time

You can see time they've stepped in. During that flat line you can see they've stepped in 5 or 6 times in just 20 minutes.

That's very true. We're only looking at one day. We need to remember that as we're all discussing this. The next 30-60 days are going to give us a much better picture of how well the stock was valued when it went live on the market.

it never went past $43. wouldn't say it raised quite fast either, it kind of burped and then plummeted, then the underwriters stepped in to stabilize the price (twice). it's actually doing very poorly; you can watch all the excitement at; http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time

It needs to close at around $43 or $44 for the IPO to not be considered a failure.

Adwords was started back in 2000, 4 years before the IPO. By 2003 they were making a significant amount of money from it. The also had a long term plan to improve the product and grow the company beyond basic search. Dollar for dollar Google was a much better investment when they went public than Facebook currently is.

You make some good points and I'm not sure anyone has the right answer, but I do know that having definite proof of life on another world will change our culture and reinvigorate our quest for knowledge. That alone might well reshape the political landscape by forever changing our perception of the Universe around us. It might also change our economic future by stimulating space exploration.

Some might say that money is wasted, but a great many technical advances were made in our quest to put a man on the moon.

Many people don't realize that we use those advances in everyday life. Tires, footwear and communication systems have all been drastically improved from what we learned on that quest. Those are just a few obvious changes, the first two are ones most people wouldn't even think about and there are hundreds of others. Will finding life on Mars change life here, yes. How? I don't know, but the big picture is so big that none of us are going to really see it until happens (if it happens?).

You make some valid points, if we outsourced work on a regular basis then I agree, we would wither and die, especially since a large part of our revenue comes from picking up outsourced work from other companies. But it's very seldom we have someone else jump in and help us out. When we have reached out it has been to people I've known for most of the last 10 years and have proven themselves to be reliable.

You're also making the assumption that when we have outsourced we've been totally ignorant of what work they've done to accomplish the goal. When in reality we've often worked side by side with them working on the same project, following the same road map. Hiring someone to help doesn't mean handing the entire project off and have them do it for you, it means hiring someone to work with you (or at least it should). The point is that you have to treat them just like someone on the team who is sitting in the office next to you (it also means having a wife who doesn't get upset because you have a middle of the night conference call).

That would be the client. Sometimes things get pushed up because the client decides they need something sooner rather than later. Personally I'm not going to tell the client "tough luck, we can't do it", especially if they're paying extra, we're going to rely on people we know and trust to make sure we have a customer who is happy. It doesn't happen often, maybe twice in the last three years, but it does happen.

Money. That's our excuse. Not because it's "cheap" to hire those guys, but because their work tends to be solid and reliable. We didn't pick them because they were inexpensive, we picked them because after years of chatting back and forth on several tech sites we gained a huge respect for their knowledge and skills. By choosing people who have serious talent we've grown, which has let us hire more people full-time, American People, who live right here and come to the office everyday. So occasionally tossing some projects out to people elsewhere has made us more effective and have helped us create American Jobs and have put more money in our pockets. So our lame ass excuse is capitalistic greed and it don't get more American than that.

Further south, we're true hay seeds. Kansas City Mo. I think he got bent out of shape because we've outsourced some of our work to a couple guys in India when the deadlines have changed and exceeded our internal capacity. Some of the greatest developers I know are from India and if someone thinks taking advantage of their skills is "Un-American" then that's their loss. We developed those relationships, those friendships, because they share the same passion for development that we do. As a general rule we only re-outsource when the dynamics of a deadline changes in mid-project and we need some quick help. Yes, we're Americans, but most importantly we're humans beings, just like those guys in Bangalore.

We do a lot of out sourced work for other companies and our customers tend to be very happy with us and many of them come back to us for follow up projects. We're also not cheap, in fact our fees are rather high, but so are our standards. We're located in the mid-west and the vast majority of our customers are within our region, but I've been known to hop on a plane and fly to the coast to finalize a deal or to reassure a customer that we're real people doing real work. Your first sentence says it all, you get what you pay for. As for the time zone statement I think it depends on who you're outsourcing. There have been times where we've outsourced some of our projects in order to meet deadlines and we've established solid contacts with several Individuals in Bangalore and I've found them to be an absolute treat to work with. If someone is going to outsource the most important deciding factor shouldn't be money or location, it should be skill. Any good development firm is going to have a list of previous satisfied customers that should provide a solid reference, if they don't then you shouldn't take the risk unless you're willing to accept sub-par work for sub-par pay. If someone is looking for "cheap" then that's exactly what they'll get.

Once. He ran as a Libertarian Candidate one time. You make it sound like he ran as the Libertarian candidate half a dozen times. It was 1 time. I'm not sure 1 can be considered "many", but to someone who has lived through only a couple of elections as an adult it might seem like he's "always" running for President and it might give them the perception that it's been a great many times, but in reality he has only run for President in two previous Elections (Once as a Libertarian in 1988 and once as a Republican in 2008). This would be his third run. Just for your information the following men also ran for president 3 times; Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, and Richard Nixon.

Getting a little bent out of shape aren't you? You seem a little angry that you can't grasp the concept. It's alright to not understand something, but to display blatant anger and disrespect at someone over your own lack of understanding is rather childish and certainly doesn't progress the conversation.

I realize you want some kind of lab experiment proving or disproving my belief, but as I stated in a previous comment I do not have any idea how to test the theory, it's kind of like asking me to prove you're sentient. So let's start there. Being sentient essentially means being aware of your own existence (that's kind of a dumbed down explanation, but I figured it was as complex as we need to be in this discussion). So I assume you're aware that you exist, but can you provide an experiment that proves it? Can you prove that you are aware?

Provide me with a scientific experiment that proves you're sentient and we'll see if we can scale it up. If you can't prove you're sentient then I suspect proving the Universe is sentient won't be any easier. Oh, and do try to keep your anger in check, if you want to have a meaningful discussion I'm game, but please leave the blatant disrespect out of it.

Interesting question. I wish I had an equally interesting answer. Sadly I still haven't come up with an experiment that proves people are sentient, much less the Universe. In fact most of what I've seen would say at least a majority are not. Of course I'm waxing philosophically and your question deserves an honest answer. I would be interested in any experimental ideas that could prove or disprove the theory. If I come up with something I'll be sure to post it.