Facebook's IPO dog and pony show is online. Watch it and wonder.

By Dian Vujovich

If you’re dying to get a piece of Facebook’s IPO and kinda sorta know you won’t but still want some inside sales scoops about how-great-thou-company-art, there is a nifty way to do so. Provided, of course, you’ve got 30 minutes to spare.

Yes, it’s true. Facebook is finally slated to come to market May 18. So if it’s the prospectus you’d like to download and read or the sales pitches from the company’s team and from the always facebland and emotionless persona of the young Mr. Zucherberg, iporoadshow.com is the place to go.

One of the first things you’ll learn while viewing it is Facebook’s Mission: Making the world more open and connected.

The stock’s IPO will be priced May 17, is expected to be somewhere between $28 to $35 a share and its ticker symbol will be FB.

Of course, we all know that once the stock begins trading publicly the biggest winner will be Mr. Z.

Along with the company raising what could be in the neighborhood of $11 billion, the young why-doesn’t-this-guy-ever-smile Zuckerberg will come into billions on his own. And after the company goes public, will “own or have the ability to control approximately 57.3 percent of the voting power” of the company’s outstanding capital shares, according to the SEC filing. That’s a lot and something to think about. It also means he will remain King of the Facebook Castle.

What troubles me about this IPO isn’t that there’s no guarantee it’s going to make investors a bundle during its first day of trading—sometimes IPOs do and sometimes they don’t. Or, even during its first few weeks or months of trading. Or, that some expect Facebook’s P-E to be about 80 times its 2011 earnings and 19 times its revenue. Or that locally there doesn’t seem to be a huge interest in the IPO.

Robert Harvey, proprietor of the investment firm bearing his name, said there has “not really” been much interest from his clients. Kurt Sylvia, senior vice president at UBS Private Wealth Management, said, “Surprisingly, we have had limited requests for the Facebook IPO.”

Rather, it’s that the company and has got to grow–and continue to grow– faster than Jack and the Beanstalk’s magic beans for the company to provide its shareholders with any long-term rewards.

Additionally, from a personal side it troubles me that the 27 year-old Zuckerberg doesn’t exude much in the way of
outgoing personality. I don’t see an effervescence in his style or skip in his step like I’d expect to see from a young enormously successful entrepreneur.

Instead, it’s almost as if he has spent way too much time in front of a computer screen figuring out stuff and not enough time in real life face-to-face meetings with people where he can reach out and connect with people humanly, one-to-one and sans a computer screen.

I know that it’s a brand new—well, really kind of decades old– computer world we live in. And that exchanging photographs, along with pretty much useless news about what’s going on in your life with some people who might care but plenty of those who really don’t give a damn, is what’s happening. But, how long can that kind of non-touching voyeuristic rush last?

Then again, maybe we’re all peepers at heart and the trend will go on into infinity and the great beyond. Which is where most of this computer stuff ends up anyway, isn’t it?

To view Facebook’s IPO dog and pony show visit: aiporoadshow.com.