Facebook saw a rocky initial opening, when the network took out its first opening report since going public in May. The social network saw a loss of $743 million, which also slashed down its share prices. The social network went public with 421 million shares as part of its original offering. Out of that number, around 271 million shares are expected to be unlocked Thursday. It is reported that Facebook’s less-than-perfect market performance may in fact help the firm with this problem. Investors who are looking to earn some money would be the only ones selling their shares, and as Facebook’s stocks have dropped from its initial price offering of $38, it is not expected to make more money. There is also speculation that Facebook will unlock more shares in the coming months, as is expected that around 1.8 billion shares will hit the market within the next year. The social network’s tiered system states that the employees who have received shares as compensation will also have them unlocked in the fall. There are many analysts who have underestimated the impact that shares could have on Facebook. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush states that it would not look good only if high-level officials within Facebook sell their shares, which is not at all expected. On Wednesday, shares of Facebook were closed at a price offering of $21.20, which went up for around four percent for the day, but was down by 44 percent for its IPO of $38.
