A great amount of money was kicked out of Facebook’s founder and CEO personal fortune and now more members of the Zuckerberg family are working for Google.

Social media phenomenon Facebook was developed by Mark Elliot Zuckerberg in 2004 while he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University studying computer science.

Facebook became a publicly traded company on May 18. It was listed under the ticket FB on the NASDAQ, and the first sale of stock by the company to the public was priced at $38 per share. This was one of the biggest Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) ever, and during the first day of negotiations the share reached the price of $45. Zuckerberg’s social network was the only U.S company that went public with a market value over than $100 billion.

Facebook’s shares hit a new low of $19.01 on August 17 after the tech company released 271.1 million shares on Thursday and early investors got the green light to sell for the first time. This is more than one-half of the 421 million shares that were sold when the tech company debuted in May.

Compared to the opening price, Zuckerberg’s social network has lost nearly 50 percent of its value since the floatation. Half of investors’ capital has vaporized in three months because of this disaster. Wall Street bankers were paid $176 million in fees in order to sell the $16 billion of share they sold on the Facebook Initial Public Offering.

Meanwhile, the investors who bought Facebook’s share on the IPO have lost nearly $8 billion by now. Lynn Cowan of the Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook’s bankers are divvying up another $100 million they made on Facebook’s shares. That means they are shorting Facebook’s stock, so bankers are actually betting against their own clients.

According to Bloomberg, Facebook is now the worst-performing IPO since records began. But what does this mean exactly? It means that most current and prior employees at Facebook are now worth far less than they were a few months ago.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article stating that there are many who believe that Mark Zuckerberg should stand down and let someone else run the $10 billion company. Sam Hamadeh head of research firm PrivCo, Barry Ritholtz, head of research firm Fusion IQ, Chris Whalen, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners in New York and Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of Tampa-based IPO Boutique, are some of the investors who believe that the company should hire an experienced CEO to run things.

The founder and CEO of Facebook has lost $600 million because of the company’s decline on Friday, and the young entrepreneur has dropped out of the world’s top 10 technology billionaires’ club, the Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

James Goodnight, the co-founder of SAS Institute, is now worth more than Facebook’s CEO and replaced Zuckerberg as the 10th-richest person on the list. But don’t worry, because even though Zuckerberg’s personal fortune has dropped $600 million, he is still worth nearly $10 billion.

Earlier this month during a company-wide meeting, which was held in order to boost company morale, Zuckerberg admitted that the stock’s decline is “painful” to watch for some employees. In the coming months, experts expect the company to lift more sales restrictions in order to maintain Facebook’s stock at a state of stagnation for quite some time yet. David Kirkpatrick, author of ‘The Facebook Effect,’ thinks that Zuckerberg isn’t really concerned about the diminishing value of his own stake in the company.

But stocks are not the only thing Zuckerberg’s company is losing. Last Tuesday, Google obtained Wildfire, the social ads marketing firm, where Zuckerberg’s sister, Arielle, works. Arielle Zuckerberg is now officially an employee at Google, Facebook’s biggest rival. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly tried to persuade Arielle to work for Facebook, but she wanted to pursue an independent route.

Mark’s other sibling, Randi Zuckerberg, left Facebook last year in order to begin her own media company. Randi commented on Twitter about her sister’s career move, saying that now there are officially more Zuckerberg family members working for Google than Facebook.

Image Courtesy of    jdlasica

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Facebook has grown impressively over the past year and is said to be worth somewhere near 65 billion U.S. dollars. As the leading social network, Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide. From January to November of 2010 the Facebook received 8.9 percent of all Web visits in the United States, said the New York Times.

In June, Facebook accounted for nearly one third of all Internet display advertisement impressions in the United States, more than the combined total of Yahoo, Microsoft Corp, Google and AOL Inc., according to a report given by analytics firm comScore. Facebook is now worth more than eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner.

Investors are taking note of Facebook’s financial success and are prepared to put their money into the popular social network site. According to information the New York Times gained through e-mails, Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor recently put about $ 50 billion in Facebook, raising the social network’s worth immensely.

Goldman Sachs and the Russian investor now have an early “claim” on stock in Facebook. And with this large investment, Facebook has more power to recruit top employers and develop new products, according to the New York Times. Additionally, interest in Facebook shown by Goldman Sachs speaks to the might and success of social network site, since Goldman Sachs is considered one of  Wall Street’s “savviest investors.”

Many investors are taking positions for a possible Facebook initial public offering (IPO), after analyzing the viability and recently reports on the company’s profitability.

Reuters said it is expected that Facebook will go public in 2012. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has often declined to comment on the company’s earnings or future business plans. But it is clear that Facebook is facing increased competition from Google in the social sphere.

The search-giant recently released Google+ which reportedly added more than 10 million members in its first two weeks, becoming the world’s fastest growing social network. According to the New York Times, analysts are now confirming that Facebook’s sales volume is around 2,000 million dollars annually.

The social network has doubled its revenue during the first six months of the 2011, compared with the same period in 2010. In the first half of the year, Facebook earned around 1,600 million dollars, as published by Reuters, according to a source close to the social network.

The social network site is on the rise and the public waits in anticipation to see if Facebook will reach out for stockholders this coming year.

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