Shares of social-media companies, led by Zynga, tumble on Facebook debut, technical problems

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Shares of social media companies tumbled Friday after Facebook made a lacklustre stock-market debut amid reports of a slew technical trading glitches.

After pricing at $38, Facebook Inc. shares opened at $42.05 on the Nasdaq market. The shares quickly fell back to their IPO price but later rebounded, rising $3.33, or 8.8 per cent, to $41.33 in early afternoon trading.

Nasdaq initially planned the first trades of Facebook’s stock for 11 a.m. EDT, then 11:05 a.m. The trading finally started at about 11:30 a.m. Just before noon, Nasdaq said on one of its websites that it was “investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages” from the Facebook IPO.

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The stock’s tepid initial gains appeared to rattle investors in other social media companies, especially those with ties to Facebook. Shares of those companies tumbled shortly after the world’s largest social network made its market debut.

One of the biggest losers was Zynga Inc., whose shares were halted shortly after Facebook began trading. The company is responsible for the popular FarmVille and Mafia Wars games played on Facebook and it relies on the social networking site for the bulk of its revenue.

It was unclear how long the stock was halted or why. Officials for Nasdaq and Zynga did not immediately return calls and emails seeking comment.

Shares of the San Francisco-based company, which went public in December, initially dropped $1.19, or 14 per cent, to $7.08 before rebounding and were at $7.59 early in the afternoon. The initial drop easily passed the company’s previous low of $7.34.

Elsewhere in the sector, shares in Groupon Inc. was off 73 cents, or almost 6 per cent, to $11.68, after tumbling to $11.33 right after Facebook shares started trading.

Since going public in November, the Chicago-based online deals company’s shares have traded between $9.63 and $31.14.

Shares of Linkedin Corp. also tumbled as much as 8 per cent to $96.60 in morning trading, before climbing back to $102.75 later in the session.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based online professional networking service, which went public last year, is probably the closest thing to Facebook Wall Street has seen.