Facebook stock sinks

Facebook's stock has fallen below $30 for the first time since its much-awaited public debut this month.

The social media company's shares fell $3.07, or 9.62 percent, to close at $28.84 Tuesday. That's down 24 percent since its public stock debut. It went as low as $28.65 earlier in the day.

Facebook Inc. began trading publicly on May 18 as one of the most anticipated stock offerings in history.

The site, which was born in a Harvard dorm room eight years ago and sprouted into a worldwide network of almost a billion people, was supposed to offer proof that a social media company can be a viable business, not just a relatively short-term fad.

Facebook's initial public offering of stock was priced at $38 and raised $16 billion for Facebook and some of its early investors. The price put the company's value at $104 billion -- more than Amazon.com, at $98 billion, at the time.

But the stock's public debut was marred by technical glitches at the Nasdaq Stock Market that delayed trading.

And the company, along with the investment banks that led the IPO, is the subject of at least two shareholder lawsuits. They allege that analysts at the large underwriting investment banks cut their financial forecasts for Facebook just before the IPO and told only a handful of clients. Morgan Stanley, one of the underwriters, has declined to comment. Facebook calls the lawsuits "without merit."

With the latest drop, Facebook's value is about $79 billion. -- AP