Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, and COO Sheryl Sandberg gathered with a throng of cheering employees at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., to ring the Nasdaq's opening bell ahead of the social media network's long-awaited IPO.
With a large monitor and stage set up outdoors in "Hacker Square," instead of visiting Nasdaq's New York exchange, hundreds of employees gathered in the early hours of the morning in California. Many of them had participated in Facebook's 31st "hackathon," a company tradition described as an overnight sleepover that encourages employees to work on anything but their normal work duties.
Nasdaq's CEO, Bob Greifeld, stood beaming next to Zuckerberg, 28, sans necktie, donning a t-shirt and clapping along with the other employees.
Trading of the company's shares, designated with the ticker symbol, "FB," will begin around 11 a.m. eastern time.
Not to abandon Wall Street completely, Facebook CFO David Ebersman reportedly was at the Nasdaq in New York City during the opening bell. Instead of scrolling the usual stock prices of the day, Nasdaq's digital billboard at its market center in Times Square this morning read, "Nasdaq Welcomes Facebook."
On Thursday night, Facebook priced its initial public offering at $38 a share, raising $16 billion and valuing the company at $104 billion. The company is offering 421.2 million shares of common A-class stock, which includes 180 million new shares sold by the company and 241.2 million shares sold by existing shareholders.
Facebook IPO, Stock Price Set, Investors Ready
Watch Video The biggest IPO for a U.S. technology firm has gotten the attention of everyone from high school students to Wall Street professionals, many of whom are likely among the 900 million monthly users of the social media site.
Out of four recent technology IPOs -- those of LinkedIn, Zynga, Pandora and Groupon -- only LinkedIn has recently traded above its IPO price. LinkedIn's IPO price last May was $45 a share. On Thursday, shares of LinkedIn closed down 7.5 percent to $105 a share.
While the IPO will make a number of billionaires out of early Facebook employees and investors, Facebook's lead underwriter, the investment bank Morgan Stanley, will also come out a winner by the fees it will earn. The investment bank determined who got shares of the company before shares are sold to the larger public on Friday.
Jim Krapfel, IPO analyst with investment firm Morningstar, said the media hype and investor buildup are to be expected, despite Facebook's investment risks.
"It's the most hotly anticipated IPO of all time," Krapfel said. "Most of the U.S. population that uses the internet uses Facebook so there's no surprise there would be a lot of interest in the IPO. Certainly with this much hype, there's a lot of demand from investors."
A trend of other high growth tech offerings show that "the more the stock goes up in the first day, the more it declines in the ensuing weeks and months," he said.
Morningstar has valued the company at $32 a share but Krapfel said he expects the stock to trade into $50 and above.
The largest U.S. IPO of all time was that of Visa, which had a size of $17.9 billion at $44 a share in March 2008.
ABC News' Lauren Pearle contributed to this report.
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