Facebook's First Shares To Sell For $38

UPDATE: When Facebook's first public shares go on sale Friday morning they will trade at $38 a piece, a price that will make the social media giant's IPO the largest ever for an Internet company, CNBC reports.

The $38 figure is at the top end of the range the company had predicted. At that price, the Associated Press reports, the IPO is expected to raise $18.4 billion for Mark Zuckerberg and co., making it one of the most lucrative IPO's in the history of Wall Street. USA Today reports that the social media giant is on pace for the third-largest U.S. IPO ever and the seventh-largest in the world.

Forbes, however, picks up on an oddity: Zuckerberg's net worth will actually shrink from an estimated $16.5 billion to $15.5 billion once the stock start selling, based on the magazine's calculations.

Wednesday, May 16: Facebook has upped the size of its initial public offering by 25 percent, which puts it on track to raise $16 billion due to strong investor demand.

Reuters reports that the social network will offer 84 million additional shares in its IPO, bumping the total offering to about 421 million shares. The additional shares, combined with an increased price range announced Tuesday, puts Facebook on pace to be the third largest U.S. IPO in history, topped only by Visa and General Motors.

But tempering the good news for Facebook's IPO is General Motors's decision to stop advertising on Facebook. The company announced Tuesday that it planned to pull its advertising campaign from Facebook, noting that they don't believe the paid ads influence consumer car choice very much. The Detroit carmaker, however, will continue to use its own Facebook business page, as the BBC reports.

Tuesday, May 15: Facebook has raised the price range for shares of its initial public offering roughly 14 percent in response to strong demand, a move that potentially pushes the valuation of the social media titan above the $100-billion mark.

The increase, from $28-$35 to $34-$38, was made public in an SEC filing Tuesday. Reuters reports that the new price per share places the value of the company somewhere between $93 billion and $104 billion, which is on par with the likes of Amazon.com. Bloomberg points out that a valuation around $100 billion would make Facebook worth more than either Citigroup or McDonald's. The first day of trading for the company on the Nasdaq is Friday. It will likely stop taking orders for its IPO later Tuesday, two days ahead of schedule.

Facebook is offering 337.4 million shares, about 12 percent of the company. They'll likely raise about 12 billion off of those shares, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, a new poll suggests that the company may have some work to do when it comes to selling users on its revenue-making services, something that could affect its share price down the road. A CNBC/AP poll found that about 57 percent of Facebook users never click on ads or sponsored content while visiting the site. A further 26 percent said that they rarely click on sponsored content. A majority of users (54 percent) also said that they wouldn't feel safe at all buying products or services through Facebook. Nearly six in 10 said they don't trust Facebook to keep their personal information private.