Twitter IPO news today generated buzz
Although the “#TwitterIPO” hashtag didn’t trend, tech circles and investor circles alike were abuzz today with Twitter’s going public and joining the ranks of Facebook. Opening on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol “TWTR,” the company set their price at $26 yesterday, and opened at $45.10 and a $31.8 billion valuation, hitting a $50.08 high on its first day, and closing at $45.87.
The Twitter IPO news generated much needed cash for Twitter (they have investors that actually expect their money back), but more interestingly, it generated a great deal of trash talk, and not from Facebook, and not completely toward Twitter itself, either.
Trash talk from NYSE
When Facebook went public, they chose to file under the NASDAQ which traditionally attracts tech companies, but the technology behind the exchange failed miserably and the launch went down as one of the most screwed up in history. The NYSE operates differently, with more human oversight and interaction, so according to the SeattlePI, the day was filled with trash talk by the NYSE and NYSE groupies who assert their method is superior.
The bottom line is that Twitter’s choice may be reflective of other tech stocks’ choice of where they are indexed, which is ironic given the fact that NASDAQ relies on technology, so you would think tech companies would be attracted to that method. But if the technology isn’t reliable (or umm, fail whales), alternatives begin looking attractive.
Economist trashes Mashable, others
Renowned economist, Barry Ritholtz took Mashable, Statista, and MSN to task for their use of a graphic that he calls “actively misleading,” warning investors against graphics of this nature (seen below):
Click to enlarge
Ritholtz urges the graphic creators, “when describing the process of going public, do not hand-select the best tech IPOs of the past 20 years to use as proof of how awesome all tech IPOs themselves are.” He warns against investing based on graphics like this that don’t take into account that no one knew that Amazon, for example, would blow up, or that it’s been trading for a much longer time period than others.
He notes he is a prolific Twitter user and is “constructive” about the stock’s initial pricing, but “cannot condone the use of horrific infographics like the one above.”
But this wasn’t the only crap graphic floating around, trust us. Take for example MediaBistro’s AllTwitter blog said they’d answer your five burning questions about the Twitter IPO, and lazily featured a graphic outlining what an IPO is, which isn’t Twitter specific and condescendingly oversimplifies a truly complex process, failing to mention any of the recent changes to the filing process.
Trash talk from The Atlantic (our favorite trash talk of the day)
Above all, our favorite trash talk was The Atlantic’s take on the investment, which has and will continue to draw amateur (retail) investors, which is common during what they call “splashy IPOs of hugely popular, but reliably unprofitable, companies, whose economic future is utterly uncertain.” Nice.
“After all,” the publication continues, “the only reason to buy a stock is if you think it’s not priced properly, which implies that you know more than everybody else. But what, exactly, could you possibly know about Twitter that other people don’t?”
For those considering buying Twitter stock, The Atlantic made a flow chart for you, capping off our highlights of the diverse trash talking corners of the world:
