????2月1日，Facebook終于向美國證券交易委員會（SEC）遞交了正式的S-1文件，朝著第二季度首次公開募股（IPO）的目標邁出了第一步。雖然市場普遍對此早有心理準備，但財經媒體卻完完全全為之陷入了集體瘋狂。整整一個禮拜，Facebook成為了電視、廣播、網絡和報紙的唯一話題。

????但所有報道都忽視了一件事，即Facebook很早以前就完成了事實上的IPO。是的，Facebook早就上市了，只是普通投資者沒有收到邀請罷了。

????曾幾何時，上市是一件值得驕傲的事，是一種特權。一家公司要不知疲倦地努力多年，才能達到這一目標。一旦機會出現，它就會緊緊抓住，既不會端架子，也不會在投行家首次登門拜訪時斷然回絕。但出現這種局面的原因是因為，當年上市公司仍然擁有很多非上市公司夢寐以求的一些優勢，包括華爾街分析人士的跟蹤關注、獲得融資渠道、建立廣泛多樣的股東基礎等等……我是不是提到了獲得融資渠道這一點？

????但證券交易所不愿光為會員牟利。它們決定開始追求利潤，放任反競爭行為和破壞性的（但出手闊綽的）新“客戶”通過算法代碼吸走每日交易的所有能量。隨著價差從每股的幾分之一，到十分之一，乃至百分之一，股票做市利潤率也逐漸消失于無形。這種現象導致做市商和特設交易商（specialist）的徹底消失，雇傭分析師研究所交易股票的經紀公司也隨之大量消亡。

????最終的結果是，公司就算上市，也要努力贏得分析師的關注，它們的股票交易由機器擺布，還會遭遇指數ETF選股籃的調整而引發的波動。圍繞上市公司信息披露的監管規定繁瑣無比，要求公司必須及時準確地向公眾股東披露信息，但公司必須為此支付高昂的費用。于是，它們開始三緘其口，只提供經律師審核過的、最簡要的業務更新信息，披露次數也盡可能減少。

????由于我們的公開市場如此令人失望，像Facebook這樣機智聰明的公司找到了一個變通方法，可以避免這樣有名無實的IPO，悄悄地籌集資本，建立股東基礎。事實上，Facebook根本就是因為美國證券交易委員會有關股東超過500人的公司必須上市的規定，才不得不最終提交了上市申請。

????今天尚未IPO的Facebook與其他任何真正在證券交易所上市的公司相比，幾乎沒有什么大的區別。Facebook在不同的階段進行了無數輪的風險融資活動，如今已經擁有幾十億美元的資本。由于投資者高盛（Goldman Sachs）和數字天空技術合伙公司（DST Partners）這些公司自身就有投資者資本注入，Facebook事實上擁有了幾千股東。公司每份公告都獲得了金融媒體連篇累牘的報道，眾多非專業和專業的分析師們根據扎克伯格的片言只語建立起Facebook財務模型。

????On February 1, Facebook at long last filed its official S-1 document with the SEC, the first step toward an initial public offering (IPO) the company expects to do in the second quarter of this year. Despite the fact that it was widely anticipated, the financial media went absolutely bananas. Facebook was the only subject on television, the radio, the web and in the paper. For a week.

????But lost in all of this saliva-covered enthusiasm was the fact that Facebook's de facto IPO had already occurred a long time ago. Yes, Facebook already went public, you just weren't invited.

????Once upon a time it was both an honor and a privilege to go public. A company worked tirelessly for years just to get to that point and it leapt at the opportunity to do so rather than playing it cool or blowing off bankers when they first came calling. But this was back when being public had benefits that a private company could only dream of -- research coverage by Wall Street analysts, access to capital, the ability to cultivate a wide and diverse shareholder base...and did I mention access to capital?

????But the exchanges were unhappy with being institutions solely for the benefit for their members. They decided to go for-profit and allow anti-competitive behavior and destructive (but high-paying) new "customers" to suck all the life out of each day's trading with algorithmic codes. As spreads went from fractions of a share to decimals and then decimals of decimals, the profit margin for making markets in stocks gradually disappeared as well. This led to a annihilation of the market makers and specialists as well as decimation of the brokerage houses that employed analysts to cover the stocks that they traded in.

????The end result is that companies come public and struggle for analyst coverage, their shares are whipped about by robot traders and the whims of whatever index ETF basket they happen to be assigned to. The regulation surrounding the reporting of accurate and timely information to their public shareholders has become so onerous and expensive that they've essentially clammed up, offering only the most terse and lawyer-approved updates on their business as infrequently as they can.

????And because of this woeful state of our public markets, resourceful and clever companies like Facebook have found a workaround giving them the ability to avoid the big, bad IPO in name only while quietly amassing both capital and a shareholder base. Facebook was essentially forced into going public by SEC rules for companies with more than 500 shareholders.

????A comparison between Facebook today, pre-IPO, and almost any other company that is actually public on an exchange yields very little in the way of major differences. Facebook has billions in capital, owing to the umpteen rounds of money-raising at various levels of the venture capitalism sequence. It has thousands of shareholders by virtue of the fact that it has taken money from firms like Goldman Sachs (GS) and DST Partners who themselves have investor capital plugged in. It has the financial press hyperventilating over their every pronouncement as well as a cottage industry of amateur and professional analysts modeling the company's financials based on any scrap of knowledge that should shake loose from Zuckerberg's pockets.