Why is everybody defriending facebook?
EVERY year, thousands of companies are quoted on the stock market for the first time. The vast majority of these IPOs must content themselves with a mention in the business pages. Few make it to the front page. Facebook was different, and it wasn’t just because the IPO was so big. Facebook the business was dwarfed by Facebook the story.
There was the fact that it all began in a college dorm room, a mere eight years previously. Now, suddenly, it was on the cusp of becoming a $100 billion proposition. There was the iconoclastic 28-year-old in jeans and runners at the helm, the world leaders queuing up for a photo op, the newspaper hagiographies. The Social Network, Hollywood’s take on the company, grossed nearly a billion dollars two years before the company itself went public.
