Nasdaq came alive this morning when Facebook officially launched its long awaited IPO with shares in the company to be sold at £24 per share.

The first offering of the social-networking giant will help raise £10 billion in cash instantly and will help value the company at a staggering £66 billion. The company’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s 30 million shares are a part of the first IPO and will add £700 million to his personal wealth of £11 billion.

The much awaited IPO has lived up to the expectations by making the Facebook IPO the biggest ever by an internet based company. The search engine giant, Google, had amassed a little more than £1 billion in its first IPO.

What does this IPO mean to Facebook users? The users will have to face the wrath of targeting campaigns by advertising giants who will have access to the personal data of the 900 million active Facebook users.

The big investors who will now have considerable stake in the company will aggressively use the platform for their advertising campaigns and seek returns on their investments. Facebook, with its global online presence, has already become a great tool for advertising.

Eminent investors believe that the distribution of shares will not be fair and the biggest and oldest brokerage firms of the Wall Street are expected to receive a gain of 50 per cent or more. The traders believe that the demand to supply ratio of Facebook shares is more than 20 to 1, adding fuel to the biased distribution dividing the haves from the have-nots.

•