The Best Previews to Facebook IPO Day

Rebecca Greenfield

Before we watch Facebook be its public self at 11:00 a.m this morning, when its starts trading on the stock market, it's time to get caught up on what this all means. Last night the company priced its stock at $38 per share for a valuation of $104 billion -- the biggest pre-IPO valuation ever, of all time. But what do all those numbers mean for the rest of America? For the Internet? For the economy? For companies? For Facebook? For Facebook employees? For you? So many questions. Luckily, the Internet has been typing about this for days. Before that bell rings in a few hours, here's everything you need to know.

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Tell me more about this $38 stock price.

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  • It's big. At that price with all those shares sold, it set a record, explains The Wall Street Journal's Shayndi Raice, Anupreeta Das and John Letzing, in their staight rundown of the numbers.

  • Or, for our visual readers, The New York Times has this bubbly interactive graph thing, showing how the IPO compares to other big companies' IPOs. Spoiler: Facebook's is high. Page 2, which shows Facebook compared to former record setter Google, is the most shocking.

  • And for our number savvy folks, ZDNet has a nice 'by the numbers' post, which starts at $1, Zuck's salary starting Januar 2013, through 1 trillion -- the number of pageviews Facebook gets in one month.

  • But, after the stock starts trading on the market today, the stock price might get even higher and pop. DealBook's Nathaniel Popper explains how that all works.

  • That's what today's all about: How the stock does. AllThingsD has a nice little musing on that.

So, this means a lot of people are getting rich, right?

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  • Well, yes, some people, for sure. And, Fortune's Dan Primack has exactly who those people are and how much they are now worth. Spoiler: Mark Zuckerberg won't mind that $1 salary with the billions, plural, he is set to make.

  • But even with all that money, it's staying pretty contained, as we've covered and The New York Times's Somini Sengupta points out. The money's there, even if it doesn't look like it.

  • And, sadly, no, you're probably not going to get rich off of this, as Gizmodo's Brian Barrett reminds readers.

Wait, but I want to get rich. How do I get in on this action?

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  • Unless you're rich or connected, it might not be possible, as ReadWriteWeb notes.

  • But you might not want to do that anyway. You can talk it through with Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti, if you like.

  • Some say the company is already overpriced.

  • And some, including DealBook's Nathaniel Popper, say: Beware the tech bubble.

 Bubble. That sounds scary...

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  • Yup, bubble's pop. Here's our take on why we think all these tech overvaluations signal a coming bubble.

  • Not everyone agrees. Silicon Angle says "Bubble? No," for example.

  • And, Facebook in particular has had trouble convincing Madison Avenue and investors that it has a real business plan.

Yeah, what is its plan to grow and make money in the future?

  • Right now they make money on advertising, which right now, with GM pulling its $10 million campaign, looks unstable. but TechCrunch has a rundown of three other ways Facebook could make "a lot more money."

  • The company also has growing to do in the smartphone space, as The New York Times's Brian X. Chen points out.

Alright. But, back to me. If I'm not going to make any money, how can I have fun during this thing?

  • If you're one of those nerds, who wants the minute to minute coverage of the stock on its first day of school Bits Blog will have a live blog going.

  • If you're the competitive sort, The Next Web points to this site FacebookIPODayclosingprice.com, where regular people can predict the IPO closing price.

  • People can get their predictions in with this interactive chart over at The New York Times.

  • And for our fun readers, The Huffington Post -- thank you, HuffPost -- has put together this Facebook IPO drinking game. Hey, it's Friday.