socialnetworking

If you're not familiar with Zynga, the undisputed champ of social gaming, odds are that you're not a fixture on Facebook or into smartphone app gaming. This month, it rolls the dice on a big public offering. Are you game?

Ah, Facebook: It's where you banter with "friends," share vacation photos and "like" everything from candy bars to political parties -- so why not shop there, too? Now, retailers are making it easier to do just that.

Are you hungry for a piece of the Facebook IPO? If so, then pull up a chair. There's plenty of room at the table ... because the other guests are fleeing. After months when all we've heard is that this (eventual) stock sale will be the hottest thing since Google, the hype trend has reversed.

Back in July 2005, the deal seemed so promising. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace parent Intermix Media for $580 million. The social media pioneer was, by some measures, the fifth most-visited website in the U.S. This week, MySpace was sold for a fraction of that amount.

LinkedIn investors strapped in for a rocket ride Thursday, as its newly minted shares more than doubled during intra-day trading for its public debut. The social networking giant, which priced its IPO at $45 a share Wednesday evening, soared over $122 a share during its first day of trading.

Fueled by strong investor demand, LinkedIn bumped up its IPO pricing range by nearly 30% to between $42 and $45 a share on Tuesday, according to its filing with the SEC. The business-focused social networking giant previously had set its initial pricing range at $32 to $35 a share on May 9.

LinkedIn threw investors a bone on Monday, releasing the initial pricing range for its long-awaited IPO. But the business-focused social networking site is likely to bump up both the price range and the number of shares on offer before it goes public next week.

Facebook dipped a big toe into the group-buying waters on Tuesday, launching a test of its Deals on Facebook service. But though it's coming late to the game, analysts and merchants say they won't be surprised if the social networking titan soon poses a viable threat to market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has rejected the IPO rumors and widely reported notion that the popular microblogging site is in talks to sell a 10% stake to JPMorgan Chase for $450 million -- which would have jacked up the site's valuation to $4.5 billion.

In an attempt to crack down on spam, Facebook has shut down a number of third-party software applications in the past week. The move could signal that the world's most popular social network plans maintain righter control over the apps that run on its site.