While it may be true that Facebook’s venture into the public domain is the most significant internet news of 2012 so far, it would appear most serious investors are underwhelmed. It’s difficult to imagine an impressive initial public offering (IPO) of $5 billion would be anything but spectacular and yet many are tentatively sitting on their hands. When Google went public in 2004 with an IPO filing of just $2.7 billion dollars, just over half of Facebook’s own IPO filing, a frenzy of interested investors stormed the SEC’s EDGAR site causing a legitimate crash of a government website; all in an attempt to read Google’s Form S-1. Since then the juggernaut that is Google has made many investors richer than they could’ve hoped, stocks spiking in 2007. However the few that were late to the party received less than impressive returns and it seems no one wants to be late to this party.

Make no mistake Facebook’s IPO is bound to be wildly successful; previously E-Bay, Amazon.com, Yahoo! and Google have all demonstrated incredible returns from going public. The problem is that just like all these previous examples, the real benefit will be to the insider traders who got in at day one. Even Mark Zuckerberg’s nemesis incarnate, the Winklevoss Twins, are set to gather $300 million dollars from the speculated 1.2m shares they received in a 2008 settlement after crying bloody plagiarism. Whatever side you take, the twins are likely smiling pearly whites all the way to the bank. Without being one of the extraordinary cases that stand to benefit from the Facebook IPO, going public likely means the common man is already too late to profit wildly off the IPO.

How can it be too late to get in on the action if stocks only begin trading publically for several months? Well its likely when trading begins, retail investors will have to service the gravy train as it’s spiked and hope it doesn’t slow down. In other words you’re not likely to see returns anytime soon. With cash in hand at $3.2 billion for Facebook, paltry compared to Google’s own $45 billion, the main reason the social network has decided to go public is the dollar. Interestingly enough, while Zuckerberg may proclaim the IPO is within the vision of the company, this IPO was bound to happen considering the Securities Exchange Act of 1934; at $10 million in assets and over 500 investors, the law compels the company to publically disclose quarterly financial results. Basically their ‘well thought out’ strategy lends more to necessity than to auspicious timing.