Why? Like it or not, FB is the bellwether for the current technology/economic climate. It's one of the biggest IPOs ever, not just in size, but in renown. There was a mainstream movie made about it before it was even public. It's a huge story.
It's important to gauge these things as they happen, so the next time around you get to be the one saying, "I've seen this before." These stories may all turn out to be moot, and in 10 years Facebook could be a huge brand, in which case you can look back and remember how Bloomberg labelled it the worst performing IPO of the decade. Or, it could go south....
You're right, it's important to gauge these things, and there's been a lot of things going on this past week, and people tend to assume because the facebook IPO didn't behave the exact same way as the linkedIn IPO that it has somehow failed... but it's the stock market. It's unpredictable, and so many things affect the price of a stock. There were trading glitches, largely affecting daytraders and companies who had no desire to hold the stock long term in the first place. And there's also been a lot of back and forth on the European debt crisis this past week and general volatility over all tech stocks, not just facebook, but facebook is in the spotlight right now.
I don't think facebook's IPO has any real bearing on the industry at hand. Other recent tech IPOs like LinkedIn and Jive have varied by more than 10% in the past week.
It's important to gauge these things as they happen, so the next time around you get to be the one saying, "I've seen this before." These stories may all turn out to be moot, and in 10 years Facebook could be a huge brand, in which case you can look back and remember how Bloomberg labelled it the worst performing IPO of the decade. Or, it could go south....