Facebook

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

With a $16 billion IPO behind it and its billionth user on the horizon, Facebook has made it hard to imagine a world without it. Yet the technology industry is notorious for booms and busts. Can you remember the last time you fired up a Netscape browser, visited a GeoCities website, or invited a friend to join AOL Instant Messenger? I'm convinced that Facebook is as doomed to fail as those ventures. To remain vibrant and relevant, Facebook must overcome daunting challenges. Unless it can deftly incorporate future waves of innovation, it faces the fate of other once-successful technology companies: death.

NEW YORK - It was barely "like" and definitely not "love" from Facebook investors as the online social network's stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday. One of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings ended on a bland note, with Facebook's stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night's pricing. That meant the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room is worth about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald's, and Silicon Valley titans Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

Facebook is the biggest online social medium in the world. People love it, are uneasy with it, even a little suspicious. It just may have done something inarguably good, with immediate, measurable impact. So far, that seems to be the case with Facebook's new organ-donation push. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced that users can now choose to indicate to their Facebook world that they wish to be organ donors. And, if you choose, a link can whisk you right to your state's donor registry, where you can register online.

NEW YORK — Insiders and early Facebook investors are taking advantage of increasing investor demand and selling more of their stock in the company's initial public offering, the company said Wednesday. Facebook said in a regulatory filing that 84 million shares, worth up to $3.2 billion, are being added to what's shaping up to be the decade's hottest IPO. Facebook's stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday under the ticker symbol "FB. " The entire increase comes from insiders and early investors, so the company won't benefit from the additional sales.

It's called "25 Random Things About Me. " It lives on Facebook, the popular social-networking Web site. It's a list you fill with 25 items of personal information, ranging from the trivial to the intimate. Trivial: "I hate tuna. " Personal: "Part of me hasn't grown past the moment of my father's death. " Intimate: "I have been unfaithful, but so far it hasn't mattered much. " You send your "25 Random Things" chain-letter-style to 25 friends, and they fill it out and tag 25 others, and . . . And soon Facebook - a virtual living room where people hang out and tell everyone else what they're doing and thinking - is awash with personal revelations, admissions, info once kept private.

I'M TRYING TO be down with the whole social networking thing, so I recently joined Facebook. I mean, if I'm going to make a living as an all-around communicator, I clearly need more than just a Web site. I need the kind of Internet mojo that comes with having a profile in every available online community. I have sacrificed greatly to fulfill that need. I sat on my hands when an 18-year-old dressed in Ninja pajamas called me a "wannabe journalist" on MySpace. I repeatedly deleted dirty pictures some nasty girl kept posting on my Blackplanet guestbook.

PhillyStage facebook.com/PhilllyStage PopLife facebook.com/PopLifeinq Arts facebook.com/InqArts Restaurants and Food facebook.com/PhillyFood

Ken Savage's marriage already was strained, but the first sign that something was egregiously, electronically wrong came a year and a half ago, when his wife started taking her laptop into a different room to check Facebook. Once, Savage walked in on her. She asked, startled, "What are you doing?" and shut the laptop with a thump. The better question was: What was she doing? Savage, 38, a computer guy, eventually tracked his wife's Facebook posts and chats to discover she had reconnected with a former boyfriend on the popular social-networking website and arranged a Saturday tryst in a hotel.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When Facebook goes public — as it's expected to do this week in what is almost certain to be the biggest stock debut for an Internet company — it will be more than a financial milestone. It will also reflect how tightly a company launched eight years ago in a college dorm room has been woven into the fabric of society. In its ability to shape how people around the world communicate, debate, shop, entertain, and inform themselves, Facebook may be the biggest technological advance since broadcast television.

Here's a status update on Facebook's vaunted initial public offering: not as hot as your brother-in-law might have told you. But it remains to be seen whether the Wall Street banks orchestrating the $16 billion stock sale did anything wrong, or whether last week's investors have only themselves to blame if they feel burned. Facebook shares closed Wednesday at $32 apiece, up a dollar for the day but down nearly 16 percent from the $38-a-share initial price set last Thursday. Lawsuits are already alleging that investors were somehow duped by the high-flying social media company or its underwriters, led by Wall Street's Morgan Stanley.

Let the Facebook Inc. finger-pointing begin. After one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in history, Facebook's 19 percent drop this week prompted investors to fault everything from Morgan Stanley's role as lead underwriter, to the company's greed, to the Nasdaq Stock Market. "It was like the gang that couldn't shoot straight," said Michael Mullaney, chief investment officer at Fiduciary Trust in Boston. Taking the most heat is Morgan Stanley, Mullaney said.

NEW YORK — Facebook's stock closed down nearly 11 percent Monday, well below its $38 IPO price, in the social network's second day of trading as a public company. Facebook Inc.'s stock ended at $34.03, down from Friday's closing price of $38.23. The company lost nearly $10 billion of its market value, and is now worth around $96 billion, about $2 billion below Amazon.com Inc. "There must have been some sober second thoughts about this," said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group who was first to come out with a "Sell" rating on Facebook's stock on Friday.

With a $16 billion IPO behind it and its billionth user on the horizon, Facebook has made it hard to imagine a world without it. Yet the technology industry is notorious for booms and busts. Can you remember the last time you fired up a Netscape browser, visited a GeoCities website, or invited a friend to join AOL Instant Messenger? I'm convinced that Facebook is as doomed to fail as those ventures. To remain vibrant and relevant, Facebook must overcome daunting challenges. Unless it can deftly incorporate future waves of innovation, it faces the fate of other once-successful technology companies: death.

"It is clearly the most valuable and largest community in the world. It's like a new town square — a new water cooler. " — Vincent Schiavone, cofounder of ListenLogic, a market research company based in Fort Washington, speaking of Facebook Inc., which raised more than $16 billion in an initial public offering of shares.   "We're long-term investors. It's nice to have the stock up for one day, but it's only one day. It's hard to extrapolate much as to the future of the company.

NEW YORK - It was barely "like" and definitely not "love" from Facebook investors as the online social network's stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday. One of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings ended on a bland note, with Facebook's stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night's pricing. That meant the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room is worth about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald's, and Silicon Valley titans Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

It was the stock market event of the year, sure to make millions of dollars for venture capitalists, investment banks and other financiers, and billions for Facebook's founders and earliest backers. It was a cultural benchmark - the day when the phenomenon of "social media," a term many consider synonymous with the company Mark Zuckerberg created, finally cashed in on years of massive and growing buzz. But Thursday's initial public offering for Facebook shares - the most ballyhooed IPO since Google, and successful enough to value Facebook at $104 billion - arrived with some large question marks posted on its wall.

NEW YORK — Insiders and early Facebook investors are taking advantage of increasing investor demand and selling more of their stock in the company's initial public offering, the company said Wednesday. Facebook said in a regulatory filing that 84 million shares, worth up to $3.2 billion, are being added to what's shaping up to be the decade's hottest IPO. Facebook's stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday under the ticker symbol "FB. " The entire increase comes from insiders and early investors, so the company won't benefit from the additional sales.

Half of Americans think Facebook is a passing fad, according to the results of a new Associated Press-CNBC poll. And, in the run-up to the social network's initial public offering of stock, half of Americans also say the social network's expected asking price is too high. The company Mark Zuckerberg created as a Harvard student eight years ago is preparing for what looks to be the biggest Internet IPO ever. Expected later this week, Facebook's Wall Street debut could value the company at $100 billion, making it worth more than Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When Facebook goes public — as it's expected to do this week in what is almost certain to be the biggest stock debut for an Internet company — it will be more than a financial milestone. It will also reflect how tightly a company launched eight years ago in a college dorm room has been woven into the fabric of society. In its ability to shape how people around the world communicate, debate, shop, entertain, and inform themselves, Facebook may be the biggest technological advance since broadcast television.