 &amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=2c80bf265a" &amp;gt;Facebook IPO: Live Blog&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK ( TheStreet ) -- Ending months of feverish anticipation, FB ) made an eventful debut as a public company on Friday, dashing investor hopes of a massive IPO pop. Reuters Facebook debuted on the Nasdaq Friday morning, but lost most of its gains by the end of the session. SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The hotly anticipated initial public offering of Facebook Inc. on Friday largely fizzled, as the social network’s debut was racked by technical problems as well as a market-wide selloff that clipped nearly all of the stock’s gains by the closing bell. Despite repeatedly touching $38 just before market close, the stock avoided negative territory, and closed at $38.23. That's when Facebook's underwriters had to step in to support the company's share price, people familiar with the matter said. “There are a lot more shares in the marketplace to satisfy the demand from retail investors. Photos: Facebook's First Day of Trading View Slideshow 
 
 The stock's 0.6% rise was far below the first-day performance of other companies that raised $5 billion or more in their IPOs, such as United Parcel Service Inc., which experienced a 36% first-day pop in 1999, according to Dealogic. Some Web-company IPOs over the past year, such as the social network LinkedIn Corp., more than doubled on their first days, though game maker Zynga Inc. closed down 5% on its December debut. Its stock market capitalization makes Facebook bigger than computer firm Hewlett-Packard Co., and puts it in the same league as PepsiCo Inc. 
 
 At Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., the mood was celebratory, according to people on the company's campus. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the company from his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and who is now worth $19.25 billion, rang the Nasdaq opening bell from there early Friday morning amid a gathering of around 2,000 employees. “It comes down to what investors want to pay for Facebook’s potential,” he added. The hours leading up the IPO on Friday morning were busy at Facebook. Nasdaq officials told members in a notice at noon that its staff was "investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages" from trades made in Facebook's IPO. After pricing its IPO at $38 a share late on Thursday, the social networker's stock opened at $42.05 at roughly 11:30 a.m. The biggest-ever tech IPO, however, caused theexchange to struggle with phenomenally heavy volume as more than 573 million Facebook shares changed hands. A lot of people expected the pop — I would point to that as the first reason.” 
 
 
 
 The company priced its offering of 421.2 million shares on Thursday afternoon, making for the largest technology IPO ever.
– Facebook has seen a mixed start to its IPO: Initially priced at $38 each, shares in the company quickly jumped about 11%, opening at $42. But things cooled off, and at one point in the first half-hour, shares were back down to about $38, notes the Wall Street Journal. They were hovering just under $40 around mid-day. “I think it’s surprising that they didn’t get the pop that many were expecting,” one analyst tells MarketWatch. “It seems the underwriters did not leave much upside, or perhaps investors were signaling that they would buy a lot more shares than they ended up actually buying.” TheStreet.com has a liveblog here.