By going public, Facebook joined a diverse group of companies. Some, like Apple and Amazon, have had huge success selling pieces of their company to the public. Others, like Enron and Tyco, couldn't take the public scrutiny and failed as a result. Since taking a company public requires jumping through a lot of hoops, fewer companies are doing it. So why go public at all?

Our panel of social, political and pop-cultural experts to tell us about the stories you may have missed this week.

Facebook and its IPO's underwriter Morgan Stanley are facing at least three shareholder lawsuits alleging that the companies allowed misleading assessments and omissions in their IPO registration statement. This, on the same day that Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth William Galvin issued a subpoena to Morgan Stanley in response to other allegations. Peter J. Henning, a professor at Wayne State University Law School who specializes in white collar crime, co-wrote an article about this for the New York Times' DealBook.

Just days after Facebook’s initial public offering serious allegations are surfacing about whether the IPO was dramatically mishandled by Morgan Stanley. Henry Blodget, the CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider explains how what was supposed to be Morgan Stanley’s crowning achievement is beginning to look like a major misjudgment.

To many Facebook shareholders, yesterday was likely another dispiriting day. Shares only dropped further below its $38 IPO price, leaving many to wonder about its early valuation and the tact of Morgan Stanley's aggressive push, and many others wondering if they made an unwise investment. CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider Henry Blodget was on The Takeaway before Facebook's NASDAQ debut, and he returns to assess his speculations, and what this means for the company and its investors.

After a shaky debut, Facebook is getting off to a bad start on its first week of trading as a publicly held company. Facebook's stock is sinking nearly seven percent, falling below the $38 IPO price, in the social network's second day of trading as a public company Monday. Joining us is reporter for our partner the New York Times Michael de la Merced.

Facebook will make its much-anticipated debut today on NASDAQ as a public company. As of last night, Facebook's offer had risen to $38 a share, putting the total value of the company at $104 billion. But for investors who got burned in the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, all of the hype and hysteria over Facebook is a little too familiar.

How much are Facebook ads — and by extension, Facebook itself — really worth? To find out, The Takeaway speaks with Ralph Folz, CEO of Wordstream, a Boston-based software company in the search marketing space, and pitting Facebook's ad model in a cage match against the raining heavy-weight advertising champion, Google.

We’ve been talking all week about Facebook’s looming step into public life, set to take place this Friday. But since the social networking giant filed for its IPO back in February, there’s been one issue that’s come up time and time again: mobile monetization. Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, analyzes the magnitude of Facebook’s mobile problem.

On Friday, Facebook begins tapping into the public market and hits the Nasdaq Exchange in what will be one of the largest initial public offerings in history. Eric Jackson, founder and managing member of investment firm Ironfire Capital LLC discusses whether investing in the social networking giant is a financially savvy decision.

Questions surrounding Facebook's IPO will finally be answered on Friday, when the company begins publicly trading its stock. Doubts about CEO Mark Zuckerberg's managerial skills and concerns that the company is being overvalued have dampened the hype, but the business and technology worlds are still buzzing in anticipation of Friday's announcement. However the IPO turns out, Facebook will see some serious changes in the near future.

President Obama’s score is 91. Lady Gaga’s is 94. But Justin Bieber is the man to beat, with an all-time high score of 100. On what metric does the President of the United States lose out to pop stars? It’s not about style, humor or staying in key. It’s about Klout. As Anthony Wing Kosner, web developer and contributor to Forbes.com explains, and we hear from Sam Fiorella who failed to get a job because of his low Klout score.

Charlie Herman, business and economics editor for The Takeaway and WNYC and Callie Crossley, host of The Callie Crossley Show on WGBH, explore the stories for the week ahead, including George Zimmerman's arraignment in court, the John Edwards trial, and Facebook's campaign to justify the company's projected IPO.

A new plan from Facebook encourages everyone on the social network to advertise their donor status on their pages, along with their birth dates and schools. Could the plan be a slippery slope linking medical information and social media? Jeff Jarvis is professor of journalism at City University of New York. Art Caplan is a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Senators Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut and Charles Schumer of New York wrote to the Department of Justice and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on March 25 asking them to investigate whether requesting and using prospective employees' social network passwords violates current federal law. We're joined by Sen. Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to find out why he chose to take action on the issue.

As much as most Americans might like to think that their social networking profiles are part of their personal life, increasingly, that’s not the case. Chris Kukulski, city manager of Bozeman, Montana, tells The Takeaway why the city used to ask new hires to fill out a form providing the usernames and passwords to their social networking accounts — and why it stopped that practice. Chandlee Bryan is a career coach, former recruiter, and author of the “Twitter Job Search Guide.”

Tommy Jordan, an ordinary dad from North Carolina, launched himself into internet fame when he uploaded an eight-minute YouTube video in response to a whiny letter his daughter posted on Facebook. Viewed 28 million times, Tommy's video outlines his anger with his daughter's online complaints about household chores, and as a finale, he shoots eight rounds at her laptop. The divisive video sparked much controversy across the country around parenting and social media.

Today it's official. The social networking site Facebook filed to sell shares on the stock market. In its filing, the company said it was seeking to raise $5 billion and wants the ticker FB for its shares. But Facebook is aiming higher, hoping that the initial public offering could value the company to somewhere between $75 and $100 billion.

Facebook is scheduled to release its initial public offering sometime on Wednesday, and is rumored to be valued at $100 billion. If it turns out to be worth more than $100 billion, Facebook would be the fifteenth-largest IPO in world history, out-valuing Google's 2004 IPO by sixfold. This means big changes for the company itself, which could see many of its chief ideas people and programmers striking out on their own.

This week, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich battle for votes in the Florida Primary. Republican candidates then move on to Nevada, where the state will caucus on Saturday. Both Florida and Nevada have a significant Latino population, and the candidates will likely use their campaigns to attract Latino voters across the United States. As the Republican candidates duke it out in Florida, the Senate will introduce the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act), to prevent lawmakers from trading stocks based on information from Congressional briefings.