Rivals Get Burned as Facebook Has its Day in the Sun

By now, we all know that Facebook is getting an incredible amount of attention today, and quite rightly so, as it goes public and looks to see if it can even begin to live up to the unprecedented level of hype that is being aimed squarely at it. But, while all eyes seem to be in that direction, it looks like other web-based companies are getting absolutely pummeled. As mentioned earlier on Friday, Zynga ZNGA is down despite the fact that it closely associated with Facebook. At the time of writing, it is down 5.68% to $7.80. In fact, at one point on Friday, Zynga shares were halted due to a trade imbalance. It later resumed and was halted a second time. It is hard to determine exactly what is going on, but it seems entirely feasible that people are taking money out of one web company to put it into Facebook. Zynga is far from the only company taking a hit too; Groupon GRPN is down 5.4% from its previous close of $12.41and is currently sitting at $11.74. GRPN has had an eventful year so far, but it seems to be showing signs of "growing up", reporting an impressive first quarter. The smart money would be on it bouncing back from this basically ridiculous day's event quickly Yelp is down 5.78% on its previous close of $21.27, sitting at $20.04. LinkedIn LNKD was down 2%, while Renren RENN fell over 10%. It is worth bearing in mind that today is an oddity; it's the financial equivalent of an eclipse. The market is behaving unusually, and it is almost impossible to pinpoint the exact cause. Things should straighten out by Monday and we will begin to know what these companies, including Facebook, are actually worth. Follow me @BCallwood.