Facebook's CEO had a nearly unprecedented amount of 
     control over the company.

Is that a bad thing?

I was under the impression that Larry and Sergey did the same thing with Google. As I remember they always retained more than 50% of voting rights, and now there's a new special class of stock issued to shareholders with no voting rights.

Thing is, shareholders can be irrational, especially with companies that are working on the cutting edge, because shareholders are more interested in short-term gains. E.g. Shareholders and Wall Street were thrilled when Dell was outsourcing their core competencies to Asus, which in the end screwed them over. Dell is now just a shadow of what it used to be, with no bright future ahead.

Of course, if you view that as a warning sign, then simply don't buy. But there are other factors at play here. Do you trust the company? Do you trust the CEO? Do you understand the risks? If not, then maybe you shouldn't own stock in the first place.

Without any expectation of either control or dividends, shares don't represent ownership in any meaningful way. They're baseball cards, and the only reason to buy is to play hot potato with the other speculators.

> Is that a bad thing?

Nope. The article does explain this. None of the bullet points are meant as criticism.

Exactly - From the article:

Again, Mark Zuckerberg set up the entire structure of the company so he wouldn't be forced to make dumb short-term decisions by whining public-market shareholders. And he TOLD them that he wasn't going to make those decisions.

They just didn't listen.

The article isn't an indictment of Facebook, its an indictment of investors who ignored the warning signs that this wasn't a stock designed for a short term position and are now complaining about it.

None of this matters if the market expects significant growth in profits. FB's customer growth rate can be zero, but still command a price premium based on expected future profit growth. Given Facebook's broad customer base, and perceived untapped revenue opportunities, it seems believable.

Many people bought into the idea that Facebook had yet to scratch the surface with revenue opportunities. Obviously, the market has not shared this view.

There are others who did not even need to read the prospectus to know the points you made. If you had been following the company closely enough, most of these points were fairly evident.

EDIT: I am wondering though, if the artificially high price was a ruse - a scam used by those who COULD sell at the overly inflated IPO price to cash out tons before it dropped to what they knew was the correct reflection of value.

I'd be willing to bet this was the case.