Facebook has big day

While the rest of the stock market was taking it on the chin. Facebook shares gained 5 percent to $29.60. That's still 22 percent off the offering price, and the stock remains quite volatile. But it's a reminder that in due course the naysaying will settle down. From Henry Blodget at Business Insider:

Facebook is just like every other company: It will dance around at the beck and call of short-term speculators like a puppet on a string. Facebook was smart to set itself up to resist that pressure. And the current stock collapse is the first big test as to whether the company can walk that talk--or whether it was just talk. Based on Mark Zuckerberg's ability to withstand criticism thus far in his career, Facebook's stance on this is not just talk. The company really means it. So, to underscore that, I now think that Mark Zuckerberg should NOT say anything. He should finish his honeymoon. And then he should get back to work. And in a few weeks or months, when the stock finally settles, everyone will have forgotten about all this. Just the way they've forgotten the rocky start of one of the more famous "broken IPOs" of the 1990s...Amazon.

Meantime, the chorus of negativity continues - not just on the stock price, but on whether Facebook is still a cool place to be. The LAT teed that one up this morning:

With more than 900 million users, Facebook remains the most popular online hangout. But some young people are turning their attention elsewhere. They are checking out new mobile apps, hanging out on Tumblr and Twitter, and sending plain-old text messages from their phones. Their goal is to hook up with smaller circles of friends and share their thoughts and feelings away from the prying eyes of Mom and Dad.

Several grafs later, there was this:

Researchers who track the technology habits of teens say there is no statistical evidence that Facebook is becoming a teenage wasteland. "Just because teens are using other services like Twitter and Tumblr more -- and they are using these services in huge amounts -- doesn't mean they're using Facebook less," said Alice Marwick, a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, where she studies how teens interact with technology. In fact, 8 of 10 teens who are online use social networking sites -- and more than 93% of those users have a Facebook account, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.