Facebook stock is the most watched asset on SecondMarket, a venue for trading shares of privately-held companies.
As of June 30, 7,868 members of SecondMarket were watching Facebook stock. The second most popular, Twitter, had 4,133 observers.
Now, that doesn’t mean everyone is watching Facebook’s stock, as SecondMarket says it has over 50,000 members.
Unlike the last time SecondMarket publicly disclosed six months of transactions, no dollar value for Facebook trades nor a percentage was included in the report posted on the private marketplace’s website. If only we had complete data on the Facebook auctions that occurred during this time, we could just add them up for you.
At the end of January, $17.5 million of Facebook stock changed hands on SecondMarket; there was another auction in the middle of the month, with a closing price of $28.26 per share, but we don’t know the total number of shares that moved in that transaction.
Facebook share auctions on SecondMarket’s competitor SharesPost have been closing at higher prices, although it’s unclear why.
SecondMarket completed $268 million in transactions during the first half of this year, 75 percent more than the volume for the same period in 2010, which saw $153 million in trading.
Facebook’s continued popularity in private marketplaces certainly indicate strong demand for a possible initial public offering by the company.
On the other hand, the statistics from SecondMarket — and SharesPost for that matter — could also be interpreted as rationale for sticking to the private markets for fundraising.
Readers, do you think Facebook will remain private indefinitely, or will the company go public some time next year?
Source: All Facebook
Thursday, July 28, 2011