I don't follow stock trends and I have no investments. But when the pandemonium following the announcement of Facebook's IPO reached the point of insanity, I took notice. I have no interest in buying shares of Facebook. I have a Facebook account and depending on my amount of free time and level of boredom, I will check my page one to perhaps five times per day. I don't know why. Most of my "friends" ramble on with political statements, motivational crap, religious views or cute pictures. I consider Facebook a colossal waste of time and try to spend as little time on there as possible.

The furor over Facebook's IPO was unsettling to me. Didn't anyone remember MySpace? Five years ago, MySpace was the hot thing. Now, if anyone mentions MySpace, it's generally a punchline after a comment about Facebook. I suppose that the prospect of huge profits, fueled by media speculation and heavy-handed saturation coverage, got too many people thinking about the quick million or two that they potentially could earn. Of course, they also could fall into financial ruin but that easy money seemed to obfuscate that fact.

Facebook stock was crazy at first but it quickly slacked off in price. As of yesterday, I believe it was down to $21.00 per share, a 51% drop if I did my math right. I'm not surprised. Despite the insider tips and questionable handling of the IPO, did anyone really think that it would make them the fortune they expected? I know that a lot of people made some very quick money in the early going, but by now they've lost half of their investment. I have no sympathy for them. You take a risk, you risk losing it all. Yesterday a report came out stating that advertising on Facebook did not yield qualitative results, that very few dedicated Facebook users actually used services advertised on the pages. No surprise there either.

My dad always told me in regards to financial deals of any kind, "No deal is so good that it can't wait until tomorrow." Wise words. Now, I'm not a risk-taker with my money. I don't play the stock market. But I have to chuckle to myself when I read the daily reports of how the financial side of Facebook is imploding. Not to worry, though...something else will come along and five years from now Facebook will be a cautionary topic about how not to handle an IPO in an economics class leaving a memory of some very wealthy and some very bitter, broke people in its wake.