The Geek Girl 2012 Countdown: The Top 5 Technology Stories of the Year – Facebook’s IPO Flop

Well, we made it. 2012 is almost come and gone, and we’re all ready to start anew in 2013. But before we dive in to the new year, let’s take a look back at this year. From battling lawsuits to battling legislation, from IPO failures to record successes, it’s been an impressive and newsworthy year for technology in 2012. And that’s why all this week and into next week, I’ll be recapping the Top 5 technology stories of 2012.

4.) Wall Street "Unlikes" Facebook

Everyone loves Facebook, (or so they'd like you to think) and back in May, it seemed no one loved Facebook more than Wall Street. When Facebook announced its initial public offering (IPO) would hit the market on May 18th, things were looking pretty good for the company. It's valuation was estimated at $104 billion, the largest ever for any technology company, including Microsoft and Apple. It seemed as if Facebook was poised to become the latest Wall Street success story.

And then everything deflated.

In just a matter of days, Facebook's shares took a drastic slide, from an initial $38 a share, all the way down to $29 by the following Tuesday. It was the prefect storm of NASDAQ glitches, chaotic trading, and way too much hype that pretty much destroyed Facebook's appearance on Wall Street. And they just never could recover. Even today, Facebook's stock is just barely hitting $26 a share.

It sucks for Facebook, but I'm not really surprised. After all, how are you really supposed to make money off of Facebook anyway? You can't charge people a fee, because then everyone will flip out and bail on you. And sure, you can put ads all over the news feed and the profile pages, but there's no guarantee people are going to click on them. The way I see it, there's no real business model for Facebook, so to me it's no surprise that their Wall Street debut was such a flop.

Check back here as The Geek Girl 2012 Countdown continues with a head-to-head fight between two major tech companies.