Facebook IPO

Facebook, which owns personal information of hundreds of millions of users as it prepares to list on Wall Street.   Facebook has filed paperwork for an initial public offering recently seeking to raise $5 billion.  The company’s valuation was estimated to be as much as $100 billion, and the IPO shares may be five times as expensive as Google.  

One may argue that Facebook user and their private information are ,structured into financial product to be traded on stock exchange.   Facebook is giving its users something unpleasant to think about: Their personal information is helping to make rich people even richer.   Once it becomes public, the company’s financials will be tested by the naked capitalism. As a listed company, it will be under pressure to maintain certain growth rate expected by analysts and shareholders which means Facebook will continue to push users to share more information or engage in more online social activities with one another and with advertisers.   Facebook may adopt more business practices such as capturing and reselling data to developers and others that create new applications or services and advisers.  When the actions of Facebook are linked to greater level of monetary means, the users will find themselves increasingly vulnerable to potential privacy violation. 

Privacy has long been a sensitive issue for Facebook, and now it’s just been placed in the spotlight more than ever.