SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook debuted Friday on Wall Street with arguably the most high-profile initial public offering in history, but the lackluster trader response raised questions about how far investors are prepared to embrace social media.
Facebook's stock gained slightly during the day, but also helped drag down stock prices for the handful of other social networking firms that were already public. Trading on gaming site Zynga, which uses the Facebook platform and depends on the social media company for its revenue, was halted twice after its stock plummeted about 13 percent.
"The market was very surprised that the Facebook pop was so tepid," said Sam Hamadeh, chief executive officer of PrivCo, which tracks private firms.
Nevertheless, Facebook immediately signaled that no matter what the financial experts thought, the company was going forward with its "move fast and break things" philosophy. Not 30 minutes after the market closed came news that Facebook had made its first purchase as a public company, buying a social and mobile gifting service called Karma Science.
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