how can I buy some facebook stock before it goes public?

[JoeyV]

There are companies out there like secondmarket.com that will sell you Facebook stock before it goes public. I don't know what you mean by a "simple person" but you have to be a qualified individual to do it - you should have an investment portfolio of many millions before they will want to deal with you and you are not buying $5000 worth of stock from them either.

There are a bunch of other ways too now that we know FB is going public if you have enough money. Call up one of the underwriters and tell them you want to buy some derivative on the company market cap and if you have enough money, they will price it for you.

In general though, you have to wait like everyone else. In the meantime, maybe you can explain to me how Facebook plans tomake any significant money. The market somehow seems to think FB is worth as much as McD's. I can tell you pretty much exactly how McD's is going to make money. FB doesn't make any money and doesn't seem to have particular plans to make money except:

a) FB owns lots of personal data that can be used for targeted advertising. Somehow the notion is that this advertising is very valuable. Except nobody looks at advertising on FB ever and if FB gets overwhelmed with advertising people will switch to a cleaner site.

b) They'll make a search engine and compete with Google. Maybe they will make a hamburger chain and compete with McDonald's too. MSFT couldn't do it but maybe Zuckerberg can? Huh?

c) They will expand their market by reaching out to all the people who aren't yet on FB. So either, you don't want to deal with Facebook or you don't have a computer. If you don't have a computer yet because you live as a goat herder in Sudan, are your eyes especially valuable to FB? Targeted advertising of goat bells maybe.

Here's a secret - Facebook doesn'tr have a product or a way of making money. That means paying big bucks for FB is pretty silly.

Edit: A nobody hasn't the faintest clue. I mean not the barest indication of a hint of a wisp of a clue. Of course there is such a thing as a pre-IPO stock. Companies give them to employees all the time. Even companies that have no real plans or timetable for an IPO give stock to employees. It represents a presumably valuable stake in the business. When the IPO happens the employee stock is generally registered and is identical to the stock being sold at the IPO. Sometimes there are lock-ups (you would have to read the S-1 to find that out for FB but I haven't heard of any so I doubt there is one). Of course, there are companies like secondmarket that buy these employee stocks and sell them and are not doing anything illegal as long as they sell to qualified investors. A Nobody is jus a silly retail investor who listens to his broker tell him what the law is. Why would anybody think that there is no such thing as pre-IPO stock? I've organized S-Corps that had three members and total funding of $25K that had "pre-IPO stock". Duh.

I'm getting kind of sick of this site in which there are a few people like underexposed and PrivateBanker who know something and then a ton of people who don't know anything that answer all the time...

Edit: A nobody says that it is not considered pre-IPO stock because, uh, why? That's just silly. And as for you having more experince than me - I'll bet on whatever measure you choose to name. Any measure. Knowing more about it than me- name the contest and I'll play....