I think reality is, they probably managed to pretty accurately valuate the stock when they placed an opening price on it, so nobody saw a huge surge in price like we saw every time a dot-com IPO happened in the late 90’s.

I’m not much of a stock analyst either — but I think it’s a fair bet to say people are much more cautious these days with internet-based businesses. Facebook is, really, in a similar position Google was in back when they went public; a service used by MANY, MANY people but couldn’t really explain how they were going to monetize it, other than the typical “we sell paid advertising!” line.

Google got lucky because when THEY went public, people still believed “If you build it, profits will come!” if it existed online, and their stock value gave them the ability to buy enough other valuable products and services to add real worth. I think Facebook is trying to copy-cat that today, but Internet search and cloud-hosted business applications and email will probably prove easier to turn a clear profit on than people posting the latest pics of their pets and what they’re eating for dinner. :)