Please note – this story contains really boring finance speak. You have been warned.
Facebook, the social media machine that everyone kind of hates being on but feels obligated to will be getting its highest profile media boost next year when David Fincher’s tale of the founding of the site, “The Social Network,” hits theaters.
Last week, it was reported that the privately held company has created a dual class stock structure, shifting all current stockholders to Class B which will have ten times the voting power of holders of Class A stock. While a statement released by the company has stated that the move “should not be construed as a signal the company is planning to go public” and that the site “has no plans to go public at this time” the Financial Post in the opening paragraph of their annoyingly pay-walled story says that the tiered stock options can generally be seen as another step the company is taking to go eventually go public.
Pundits are figuring that going public shortly after the film’s release might give a slight boost to the stock value, and may even spur interest in those (like us) who really don’t have much interest (or knowledge) in the stock market into picking up a few shares. It’s a potentially crafty move, but of course, it all depends on how much the kids these days who live on Facebook actually care about the how the site was founded. Would you buy stock in Facebook?
In other news, David Fincher is following up his Facebook film with a spiritual sequel about the founding of Twitter. The interesting thing is none of the spoken lines in the film are more than 140 characters.
Nah, we’re just kidding about that one.