This article is all about Facebook Stock Price and how Facebook stock grew from a tiny valuation to an unmatchable price.
Everything about Facebook, right up from its birth to its present success has been phenomenal.
Riding high on its popularity and a dedicated user base of over 500 million users, who access the site regularly, Facebook could easily be the biggest thing on the net.
A cult like fan base remains unaltered and unmoved no matter what changes occur; be it updates in the Facebook privacy policy, or the launch of the much hyped Google Plus.
With facilities such as Facebook email lined up, things just get more interesting. All this has lead to a staggering increase in not only its popularity, but also to a rise in Facebook stock price.
When Facebook was initially launched, it covered a little more than 30 colleges under its networks. The founder, Mark Zuckerberg and two of his friends then moved to Palo Alto, California to create a more substantial base. There with the help of entrepreneur Sean Parker, they got in touch with Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and also the then Managing Director of The Founders Fund.
He invested $500,000 into the idea of Facebook not knowing what was in store. With time, the Social Networking site gained a lot of popularity and soon enough crossed the million user milestone. As soon as this happened, Friendster attempted to buy the company in 2004, and offered $10 million to Zuckerberg, which was obviously turned down.
Soon, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million into it when the company valuation was around $100 million.
This move encouraged Zuckerberg to extend the reach of the site, opening it to high school students as well. The move was phenomenal. It gained $25 million in funding from Meritech Capital and Greylock partners as well as from Peter Thiel and Accel Partners in 2005-06. The company’s value had jumped up to $525 million.
In September 2006, Facebook started its photo sharing support, which today has made it the top most image-sharing site with over 4 billion photos.
In 2006, Yahoo! offered $1 billion to Zuckerberg to sell them the website. Though only rumors, it is said that initially he agreed. But after the stock prices of Yahoo! fell, the offer was reduced to $800 million, and the deal was cancelled. Subsequently, Yahoo! again offered $1 billion, but was turned down.
In 2007, Microsoft invested in Facebook, acquiring 1.6% of the company at an investment price of $240 million.
Facebook stock prices have shown a consistent growth. They hold a current market price of $28.26 per share in the second market, which is worth a $70 billion valuation. After investments by the firm Goldman Sachs, it has been reported that its shares have been sold at as high a price of $55 per share.
The social networking giant is rumored to have reached its 500 shareholder limit, so it might make an initial public offering in the first quarter of 2012, with valuation of around $100 billion, and thus hand out more to the public who helped them reach this status.
It truly is a ‘juggernaut’. It had various competitors when born. But with the explosive growth, famous networking sites such as Orkut, Myspace have instead chosen to shake hands with it, instead of trying to compete. The Myspace-Facebook Connect and the Facebook-Orkut profile linking are more than sufficient to prove that the true king has been chosen.
