It took four months to finally get their paperwork in order with the SEC but Facebook on Thursday finally announced the initial cost of its IPO shares which will enter the market at a price of $38. At that price Facebook will have a market share of $107 billion, making it the largest IPO in tech industry history and at $16 billion the second largest IPO in market history behind only Visa’s 2008 IPO which raised $19.7 billion. If you include General Motors’ second IPO following the government bailout which raised $18.1 billion Facebook falls into third place.

Interest in Facebook shares has reached a fever pitch which caused the company’s intermediaries to halt any further trading to individual buyers on Tuesday  just three days before the company was set to go public.

33 underwriters including Morgan Stanley are responsible for selling the company’s shares, most of which will go to large institutional investors, mutual funds and hedge funds. Shares to institutional buyers are given out on Thursday night for resale when the Nasdaq opens on Friday.

In the meantime markets will open at 9:30 am ET on Friday but Facebook will likely have to wait an hour or more before it can officially begin trading on the open market, a standard delay for IPOs.

While Facebook will likely be valued around $81 billion on the day of its IPO, Facebook employees and executives hold nearly 2.8 billion unexercised shares which pushes the company’s valuation to $107 billion.

Many Facebook employees may choose to exercise their stock options in the days and months to come but one person selling some of their shares will be founder Mark Zuckerberg who will unload 30.2 million shares for a net of $1.1 billion, much of which will go to pay a massive tax bill he’ll be hit with after the company goes public.

After his stock sale Zuckerberg will control 503.6 million shares, retaining a 31% stake in the company for a personal wealth valuation of $19.1 million.

GM on Tuesday announced that it was pulling nearly $10 million in annual Facebook ads buyers because they were not producing results. Now GM competitor Ford has run to Facebook’s defense, claiming that General Motors simply doesn’t understand how to effectively use Facebook’s advertising options.

Ford tweeted the following statement:

“Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content & innovation.”

If that tweet wasn’t enough of a jab at General Motors a Ford VP told Forbes that Facebook was a “growing and critical part of our media mix.”

The Ford executive goes on to note:

“You won’t make the right choices if you view Facebook as an advertising network. You can’t just pick up advertising that would run somewhere else and put it on Facebook as an ad banner.”

Yet another executive called GM’s decision “odd” because of the powerful platform Facebook offers for reaching upwards of one billion people.

Facebook but might the talk of the week thanks to its expected $100 billion IPO talk but it is not the only social network with big news this week. Social link sharing website Pinterest received a jump from $200 million to $1.5 billion after received a new round of financing valued at $100 million.

As the Wall Street Journal notes the increase pushes the site into an “exclusive but growing club of Silicon Valley venture-backed companies” to pass the $1 billion mark.

While the company has been valuated based on the strength of its growing numbers and investor interest, it still has no known business model, takes in limited revenue and has failed to turn a profit at this time. However investors have watched as big name brands have flocked to the website, brand names that could eventually lead to big publishing rights as Pinterest continues to be a lead traffic pusher for many company’s.

The newest round of Pinterest funding comes from Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten Inc. alongside already invested firms including Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is quite possibly having the best year imaginable, his social network is about to reach 1 billion users, Facebook’s IPO launched this week and he’s only 28-years-old. Now Zuck can also add his very own musical to his list of accomplishments.

Okay so it’s only a short musical by the comedy troupe CDZA and it is more of a “musical video experiment” but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a look.

The short musical features a chronological look at Zuckerberg’s success from his days at Harvard to present day Facebook.

There are 12 parts to the musical but it only runs a few seconds under four minutes with a pianist and vocal performances from the troupes members.

To complete the video its creators borrowed music to showstoppers from West Side Story to Annie Get Your Gun.

The troupe promises a new musical experiment every two weeks.  Here’s the Mark Zuckerberg musical:

Facebook travel app Gogobot entered private beta testing 18 months ago and became available to the public in January, now the company has announced it has surpassed the 1 million registered users milestone.

According to Gogobot the application is now signing up a new user every 15 seconds and has added more than 5 million shared locations.

Using Gogobot suers can share photos from their vacations with friends and strangers (based on their settings) while providing recommendations to people who ask questions about specific destinations or general travel advice.

One of the coolest Gogobot features is the ability to create a “passport” where users can list where they have been while displaying recommendations for those locations and posting reviews for other users to browse.

The program also allows users to create trip itineraries and they can assist users in creating their own vacation schedule by showcasing that itinerary within their Gogobot account.

The mobile version of the app just released new versions for iPhone and iPod Touch apps which allow for extra features including commenting on postcards, an easier mobile platform search and the ability to sort reviews and attractions based on their current location.

Give Gogobot a try on Facebook and let us know what you think.

Facebook is about to launch what could become the biggest tech IPO in history but ahead of that initial public offering the company is losing one of its biggest advertisers. General Motors (GM) executives have decided to pull GM advertising from the social network as they determined the ads to be ineffective.

In a report regarding the social networks efficacy the Wall Street Journal reports:

 ”Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they’re no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget—a shocking fact given the site’s dominance among users.”

To put GM’s spending in perspective the company is America’s third largest advertiser and spend $10 million annually to Facebook ads. GM also spends an additional $30 million to develop content and maintain its Facebook pages, that spend is expected to stay in place so GM can maintain its social presence however Facebook doesn’t earn any money off that $30 million spend.

In the meantime as questions continue to be raised about Facebook ads efficacy the social network will need to prove that their ad outreach can work on a more broad level.

The service costs $1.99 per month and includes expert analysis of each Facebook privacy setting change so Facebook users will fully understand exactly how changes to their Facebook privacy setting will affect their accounts.

Abine will also explain to its paid users how to best secure their Facebook privacy settings to ensure they reach fully privacy when required.

The program should please many Facebook users who have constantly griped about the company’s willingness to change its privacy policy and privacy settings with little to no warning for subscribers.

Earlier today we reported about Abine’s “Go Private” campaign which the PrivacyWatch program is part of. Abine has also scheduled a flash mob for May 15.

Here’s an Infographic from Abine which showcases how Facebook’s privacy policy and settings have changed over time:

With nearly $4 billion earned in 2011 it’s no surprise that Facebook is earning money off its users, however many social network users have been curious to learn how much money the network is making off their profiles and now they can find out. A new tool called Val-You quiz has been released by online privacy company Abine and as the name suggests it tells users how much they are worth to Facebook.

The company’s goal with the calculator is simple, allow users to become aware of how their information is being turned into revenue as Facebook prepares for its much anticipated initial public offering (IPO).

The product is part of Albine’s “Go Private” campaign which will also see another product launched called PrivacyWatch which alerts users when Facebook changes any of its privacy settings, while providign security advice from experts regarding how Facebook is sharing a users private information.

The average person on Facebook is worth $50, I found out Facebook will make $55 off me over the life of my profile.

The Val-You Quiz calculator is simple to use, just visit its page and answer seven simple questions that include your demographic, your yearly income, the amount of “Likes” you create on a weekly basis and a few other tidbits of info.

You can take the Val-You Quiz HERE.

The email will include tweets and likes that are important to a user based on the people they follow and the information they share.

Twitter also plans to include a “most engaging” tweets section and stories shown in other peoples feeds and stories they tweeted or used the favorite feature to bookmark.

An official Twitter blog post reads:

“Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you.”

The blog post also uses:

“Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see related Tweets from the people you follow.”

With this new feature becoming a reality the Twitter purchase of personalized email marketing provider RestEngine a whole lot less mysterious.

Twitter says the weekly digest will “roll out in the next few weeks.”

SMS (text messaging) revenue is on the decline worldwide and while messaging services including Apple’s iMessage and Blackberry Messenger have caused those declines in years past, the newest and possibly the most costly platform appears to be Facebook and the Facebook Messaging platform.

According to a report released by market research firm Strand Consult:

“If you look at how most operators market and sell SMS, you will see that most operators charge the customer for each individual SMS he or she sends. In practice this means that the customer has a choice between sending an SMS that the customer knows costs money, or alternatively use his flat rate data subscription to write a message via Facebook if the recipient is on Facebook.”

Facebook recently reported that it has reached more than 901 million users with 425 million Facebook users using mobile phones.

According to Strand Consult:

“In many ways one can compare Facebook’s development in the mobile industry to how the Internet affected the media industry. Market players like Google, Skype, Twitter and MSN are only marginally important to the mobile industry compared to Facebook.” Strand Consult added, “The biggest difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook is a communication tool that people use to keep in touch with their family and friends every day.”

Some areas have seen lesser declines, specifically the United States and Denmark where carriers tend to sell more monthly text-messaging bundles over cost-per-message plans.