CAMP DAVID, Md. – The United States and other members of the Group of Eight industrial nations agree that Europe’s financial crisis must be addressed with a mix of growth and austerity measures, President Barack Obama said Saturday as leaders gathered for a shirt-sleeve discussion that also will cover world concerns about ups and downs in oil prices.

“All of us are absolutely committed to making sure that growth and stability and fiscal consolidation are part of an overall package,” Obama said as he and other leaders gathered in a rustic cabin at this wooded presidential retreat.

Obama was referring to the debt crises in Greece and Spain, primarily, although he was not specific in brief remarks to reporters.

Leaders of the United States, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Britain, Russia, and Japan are trying to figure out how to tame Europe’s debt crisis while also increasing the demand for goods and spurring job growth.

Obama’s argument for additional stimulus measures alongside belt-tightening is primarily aimed at Germany, the strongest member of the union that uses the common Euro currency, although Obama did not say so. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was seated a few places away from Obama at a small round table.

Leaders of the world’s economic powers say Germany should balance its push for European fiscal austerity with doses of stimulus spending to avoid a financial calamity with global repercussions.

In talks Saturday, the leaders were looking to build consensus even though a decisive plan of action seemed out of reach for now.

“We’ll also be talking about uncertainty in the energy markets and how to resolve some of those issues,” Obama said at the start of discussions on the global economy.

Obama chose the secluded Camp David setting in part to give leaders a chance for a freewheeling discussion out of sight of most media and far from the raucous protests that have accompanied previous meetings of the G-8.

The G-8 session sets the stage for a far more consequential European summit in Brussels next week where the countries that share the euro as their currency hope to come together on specific steps to fight rising debt while spurring a recovery.

The Camp David gathering opened with a Friday evening discussion focused on global trouble spots Iran and Syria. Obama said the session also touched on North Korea’s aggression and hopeful signs of democratic change in Myanmar.

“We are unified on our approach to Iran,” and hopeful of progress ahead of a diplomatic meeting with Iran next week, Obama said Saturday.

Iran may have a peaceful nuclear energy program but misuse of that program for a nuclear weapon is unacceptable, Obama said. Ever-tighter economic sanctions cannot be loosened while the world encourages Iran to rein in its program, Obama said.

“All of us are firmly committed to continuing with the approach of sanctions and pressure in combination with diplomatic discussions,” Obama said. “And our hope is that we can resolve this issue in a peaceful fashion that respects Iran’s sovereignty and its rights in the international community, but also recognizes its responsibilities.”

On Syria, Obama said the group supports a United Nations cease-fire plan that has yet to be honored in full. He said a statement to be issued at the close of the G-8 summit will reflect that support for the plan brokered by envoy Kofi Annan, but also say that the plan has not taken hold fast enough.

Most of the leaders are part of overlapping international coalitions formed to address the Iranian nuclear problem and the newer crisis in Syria, where an estimated 9,000 people have died in more than a year of violence that arose from the pro-democracy Arab uprisings.

Faced with implacable Russian opposition to significant new United Nations punishments on the Syrian regime, U.S. officials are trying to get consensus among other allies about ways to promote the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ouster.

“We all believe that a peaceful resolution and political transition in Syria is preferable,” Obama said Saturday.

A senior U.S. official said one goal of the closed-door discussions at Camp David was to impress on Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that other nations that share Russia’s usual role at the forefront of international diplomacy are seeking ways to address the Syria debacle without Russian help.

Later Saturday the leaders were returning to foreign affairs topics with discussion of Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Obama established the tone for the G-8 on Friday after meeting with just-elected French President Francois Hollande, when he said the aim of the summit was to promote both fiscal consolidation and a “strong growth agenda.”

The two leaders, Obama said “agree that this is an issue of extraordinary importance not only to the people of Europe but also to the world economy.”

In a hint of the pressures facing the leaders, when Obama greeted Merkel and asked her how she was doing, the German leader only shrugged.

“Well, you have a few things on your mind,” Obama said.

A central economic topic, though hardly the only one confronting Europe, is the fate of Greece. That country is facing the most acute financial crisis of the eurozone and is set to hold elections June 17 to end political deadlock. At issue is whether Greece abandons the euro to escape austerity measures.

Hollande, after meeting with Obama at the White House, said, “We share the same views, the fact that Greece must stay in the eurozone and that all of us must do what we can to that effect.”

For Obama, Europe’s fate is critical to his own political survival. An economic recession that spreads to the U.S. could damage an already slow recovery and boost the argument by his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, that the United States economy needs new leadership.

There is a get-acquainted aspect to the session as well.

The Camp David gathering, the largest collection of foreign leaders ever at the presidential retreat, is the first G-8 meeting for Hollande, for Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. In what has been widely viewed as a snub, Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping the G-8. He sent Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.

—

AP’s Jamey Keaton contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON – Are Republican lawmakers deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama’s re-election chances? Some top Democrats say yes, pointing to GOP stances on the debt limit and other issues that they claim are causing unnecessary economic anxiety and retarding growth.

The latest Democratic complaint came after House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that when Congress raises the nation’s borrowing cap in early 2013, he will again insist on big spending cuts to offset the increase. Boehner, R-Ohio, continues to reject higher tax rates, which Democrats demand from the wealthy.

That led Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to say Boehner is virtually assuring another debt-ceiling crisis as bad or worse than the one that shook financial markets nine months ago.

“The last thing the country needs is a rerun of last summer’s debacle that nearly brought down our economy,” Schumer said in a statement. In an interview, Schumer added: “I hope that the speaker is not doing this because he doesn’t want to see the economy improve, because what he said will certainly rattle the markets.”

Boehner responded in a statement: “Republicans have passed nearly 30 bills that would help small businesses create jobs and we are waiting on Senate Democrats to vote on these common-sense measures. The failure to act on these jobs bills, as well as our crushing debt burden, is undermining economic growth and job creation.”

Democrats say Republicans loaded their jobs bills with provisions certain to doom them in the Senate, such as restrictions on unions and on regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency.

Regardless of whether Schumer’s suspicions are right, there’s evidence that unceasing partisan gridlock and the prospect of big tax increases and spending cuts in January are causing some companies to postpone expansions. Even small economic slowdowns are bad news for Obama, who is seeking re-election amid high unemployment.

The Washington Post this past week compiled a list of military contractors, hospitals and universities that are delaying hires and bracing for cuts, partly because of fears that Washington’s partisan divisions will not abate.

The most obvious showdown will happen soon after the Nov. 6 election. Unless a lame-duck Congress can make deals, the economy will suffer a double whammy of large tax increases and spending cuts, starting Jan. 1. The tax increases would hit virtually every working American and the spending cuts would affect military and domestic programs.

Economists say that what Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke calls a “fiscal cliff” could possibly lead to another severe recession.

On top of that, perhaps by late January or so, Congress and the president – be it Obama or Republican Mitt Romney – will again confront the need to raise the country’s borrowing limit or else trigger a first-ever government failure to pay its debts. A partisan showdown over this issue last summer led to a downgrade in the nation’s credit worthiness and a sharp stock market drop.

These crucial decisions will occur after the presidential election. But investors, planners and business owners make decisions about hiring, expansion and investments months in advance. The more they worry about a serious economic downturn in nine months or so, the more reluctant they are to expand operations and hire workers now.

“All that uncertainty has us cautious, and we’re scaling back our hiring expectations,” said Eric Remington, vice president of Kaman Corp., which recently canceled plans to hire 200 new workers at a defense aerospace plant in Jacksonville, Fla.

“The law is, the automatic cuts will take effect on Jan. 1,” he said. “Everyone says, `Don’t worry, that won’t happen.’ But we’ve got a business to run, and we’ve got to plan.”

Schumer and other top Democrats have said for months that GOP lawmakers may be trying to strangle the economic recovery for political reasons.

“Their strategy is to suffocate the economy for the sake of what they think will be a political victory,” Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote in an email to supporters last October, when Congress was debating a jobs bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said his Republican counterpart was not cooperating on that legislation “in hopes that he can get my job, perhaps.”

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, told The Associated Press last year that some GOP lawmakers, “through their intransigence, cleverly set up a situation for America’s economy to fail, either by needlessly driving us to default, or needlessly driving us into massive public-sector layoffs.”

Federal, state and local government layoffs have been under way for months. They may be necessary to reduce deficits and survive recessions. But they increase unemployment, a problem for any president seeking a second term.

Since February 2010, when the economy began consistently adding jobs, the private sector has gained 4.2 million positions. But federal, state and local governments during that time have cut more than 500,000 jobs.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California did not ascribe partisan motives to Boehner’s latest warnings about the next debt ceiling showdown. But she said he may be unnecessarily hurting the economy. “It already can be damaging, just the fact that it’s brought up,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday.

Republicans say it’s absurd to make such an accusation. They point to bipartisan efforts to pass jobs-creation bills, trade pacts and, after some arguments, an extension of the payroll tax cut that Obama originally had proposed for only one year.

GOP lawmakers want Congress to act this year to ensure that none of the Bush-era income tax cuts will expire, as scheduled, on Jan. 1. Such assurance, they say, could lead investors and business owners to start expanding and hiring now.

Democrats say the move, by itself, would increase the deficit dramatically. They want to end the tax cuts for the wealthiest and they note that the economy boomed during Bill Clinton’s presidency, before the big tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were enacted.

Boehner’s aides say the speaker supports tax law changes, including eliminating some loopholes and exemptions, that could result in greater revenue even if rates remain the same or are reduced.

As for the debt limit, “allowing America to default would be irresponsible,” Boehner said Tuesday at an economic forum. “But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling without taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and reform the budget process.”

Democrats say that’s precisely the type of economic saber-rattling that can frighten investors and employers, and damage Obama’s re-election hopes. Boehner disagrees.

“I said that we should not wait until the 11th hour to address these issues,” Boehner told reporters Thursday. “The only ones who are talking about drama or brinksmanship are my Democrat colleagues.”

The danger of another credit-rating downgrade “comes from continued inaction on the deficit, and our piling debt,” he said, not from “calls for action.”

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NEW YORK – The metaphor is an easy one, overused and perhaps even a bit overwrought. We are forging forward into a digital frontier, leaving convention behind, traveling without guides into an uncharted virtual land where progress and profits are forever around the next bend.

Sound familiar?

In the 19th century, Americans expanded into a physical frontier – a geographic edge of society brimming with opportunities and dangers and challenges and setbacks. So began the notion of manifest destiny: the idea that, no matter what, the United States pushes outward to the farthest edge of the most distant place possible.

Today, almost two centuries after that term was coined, American expansionism is playing out vigorously at society’s latest cutting edge: the social space of the Internet. Friday’s high-octane, $16 billion IPO of the global juggernaut that is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is, for better or worse, the most recent example of how the new frontier has been cultivated, colonized and commanded by entrepreneurial Americans.

As the manufacturing economy reconfigures, you often hear the lament that “America doesn’t make anything anymore.” But then there’s this: Most of the world’s digital centers of gravity have been, and remain, American. Apple and Microsoft. Google and Yahoo. YouTube and Amazon and eBay. Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Kickstarter. Netflix. PayPal. Akamai, the content-delivery behemoth. Intel, the internal combustion engine of the whole shebang. And for that matter, the Internet itself and the organization that regulates its domain names were both born and raised in (you guessed it) America.

A digital manifest destiny is playing out, built upon the notion that the United States’ outward expansion continues apace on the virtual frontier. What the self-defined sense of American exceptionalism built in the physical world, it is now building in the digital one.

“It’s a projection of American values – what international experts would call soft power,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Look at what the digital space disseminates, he says: freedom of the press, of information and of assembly; knowledge and scientific advancement; free-market mechanisms and entrepreneurialism. “It’s hard to think of a cluster of ideas and architectures that would more allow basic American cultural values to propagate,” says Rainie, co-author of the new book, “Networked: The New Social Operating System.”

Technological progress has always walked hand in hand with American expansion. Where would the settlement of the West have been without Robert Fulton’s steamboat, Samuel F.B. Morse’s work in telegraphy and, later, the inventions of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford? Not to mention the old-time data pipelines themselves – the postal system, the railroads and eventually the interstate highways?

In those cases, innovation helped drive development and physically shape the frontier; now innovation itself is the frontier. And the American tendency to glorify the inventor’s spirit remains a key engine. As Alexander Graham Bell went, so goes Mark Zuckerberg.

“In this country, you’re a hero if you invent something. To be an inventor in America, that’s as good as being an explorer,” says Julie Fenster, author of “The Spirit of Invention: The Story of the Thinkers, Creators and Dreamers who Formed Our Nation.”

“The notion that `I can invent my way out of problems’ – that always fueled a sense of hope and expansion in this country,” she says.

That parallel between the frontiers of the road and the mind has not gone unnoticed by politicians and leaders looking to cast America’s newest progress in the context of the old. President Barack Obama, speaking to Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center last year, called for tech innovation this way: “That’s the kind of adventurous, pioneering spirit that we need right now. That’s the spirit that’s given us the tools and toughness to overcome every obstacle and adapt to every circumstance.”

The nation’s digital innovators have been placing virtual progress into the context of American expansionism for years. Sometimes they’re oblique about it, sometimes they’re explicit. “There is never a reliable map for unexplored territory,” wrote Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who in 1995 likened the early Internet to the Oregon Trail. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs put it this way in 1985: “In a society where information and innovation are going to be pivotal, there really is the possibility that America can become a second-rate industrial nation if we lose the technical momentum and leadership we have now.”

Manifest destiny and its first cousin, American exceptionalism, aren’t popular notions everywhere. The idea of U.S. domination in everything from cultural frontiers (Hollywood) to geographic ones (outer space) can set the world on edge. Just as irritatingly to some, America’s ability to occupy these spaces rests upon not only actual innovation but the oomph to amplify it on a global level – in effect, to shout the loudest in a crowded, if now virtual, room.

“Manifest destiny justifies a certain behavior. One could call it rapaciousness on one end, but someone else could call it being an entrepreneur, being a founder,” says John Baick, a historian at Western New England University in Massachusetts. That reflects back upon the original manifest destiny imperative to push outward at all costs; expansion, on any frontier, can also mean overrunning the people who are already there.

What has helped this dominance along? Is it the American penchant for R&D, which fuels innovation? The rise of venture capital over the past half-century, particularly in places like Silicon Valley? Is it the combination of creativity and Barnum-style snake oil that matured into the marketing culture that helps define America today? Is it the nation’s higher-education system, which has vigorously pushed the relationship between technological innovation and entrepreneurialism?

Or – and this is where it really gets interesting – is it the ability and willingness of an increasingly connected planet to adopt American innovation and take it to a global level, encouraging U.S. digital expansion in the process?

“We might look at our contributions . and fail to see that what really helped them to take off in many cases was the participation of other people globally,” says Joel Kline, an internet developer and digital strategist who teaches business technology at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania.

Last year in southwestern China, long a hotbed of brand-name electronics knockoffs, a fake Apple Store turned up – an entire store. A blogger’s photos depicted an elaborate lookalike operation complete with Genius Bar, hardwood floors, Helvetica-typefaced signage and sales associates in blue T-shirts who apparently actually thought they were working at the real thing.

Think about that. It wasn’t enough to fake the gadgets. The counterfeiters wanted to fake the FEEL of innovation that Apple markets so adeptly. The entire process, exported by an American digital company, had been swallowed whole. It was the idea that was being sold. Something intangible, but very real – the foundation of the virtual economy.

“People say, `Oh, you’ve got to invest in the tangible things – land, gold and silver, other precious metals.’ They’re solid,” says Rich Cooper, vice president for research and emerging issues at the National Chamber Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s think tank.

But, he says, “In this new era of exceptionalism, you’re now on an entirely different plane. You’re not holding dirt. You’re not holding a piece of real estate in your hands. You can’t touch it and taste it. It’s an entirely different medium, and that’s hard for people to understand and accept.”

The American frontier’s most renowned historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, made his name writing about the end of it. In 1893, he proclaimed the frontier closed, finished, conquered, settled. But he hardly thought that meant the end of manifest destiny.

“He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased,” Turner wrote. “Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.”

That remains the case, even if that field is now composed of an endless stream of ones and zeroes and Zuckerbergs that, to Americans, represent the latest evidence of the old story of exceptionalism – the desire to lead the world, now from a shining SimCity upon a hill.

“People seem to think there are no other frontiers for America to explore and that America’s sitting on the bench now,” Cooper says. “But there are a whole set of frontiers we don’t even know about yet.”

—

EDITOR’S NOTE – Ted Anthony writes about American culture for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/anthonyted

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CAMP DAVID, Md. – President Barack Obama says he and leaders of seven other major industrial nations are focusing on economic concerns during discussions at Camp David.

Obama told reporters Saturday that the leaders covered a lot of ground in talks the night before, from Iran to Syria and North Korea.

The president also mentioned the debt crisis in Europe among the countries that share the euro as their currency. The crisis directly affects many of the leaders joining Obama for the Group of Eight meeting at the presidential retreat in Maryland.

He says they’re all committed to a path that combines “growth and stability and fiscal consolidation.”

Obama also says Saturday’s discussions will cover the energy markets.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Leaders of the world’s economic powers say Germany should balance its push for European fiscal austerity with doses of stimulus spending to avoid a financial calamity with global repercussions.

The Group of Eight leaders, meeting over the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat, are trying to figure out how to tame Europe’s debt crisis while also increasing the demand for goods and spurring job growth.

In talks Saturday, President Barack Obama and leaders of Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Britain, Russia, and Japan were looking to build consensus even though a decisive plan of action seemed out of reach right now.

The G-8 session sets the stage for a far more consequential European summit next week where the countries that share the euro as their currency hope to come together on specific steps to fight rising debt while spurring a recovery.

Obama established the tone for the G-8 on Friday after meeting with just-elected French President Francois Hollande, when he said the aim of the summit was to promote both fiscal consolidation and a “strong growth agenda.”

The two leaders, Obama said “agree that this is an issue of extraordinary importance not only to the people of Europe but also to the world economy.”

In a hint of the pressures facing the leaders, Obama greeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Camp David and asked her how she was. Merkel, facing resistance over her austerity push, shrugged.

“Well, you have a few things on your mind,” Obama said.

A central economic topic, though hardly the only one confronting Europe, is the fate of Greece. That country is facing the most acute financial crisis of the eurozone and is set to hold elections June 17 to end political deadlock. At issue is whether Greece abandons the euro to escape austerity measures.

Hollande, after meeting with Obama at the White House, said, “We share the same views, the fact that Greece must stay in the eurozone and that all of us must do what we can to that effect.”

Also on the agenda is energy as the world looks to the oil markets in advance of fresh penalties set to take effect on Iranian oil exports. While oil prices have been falling, major oil importing countries, including the U.S., are keeping a wary eye on prices and keeping open the possibility of tapping their own oil reserves.

For Obama, Europe’s fate is critical to his own political survival. An economic recession that spreads to the U.S. could damage an already slow recovery and boost the argument by his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, that the United States economy needs new leadership.

There is a get-acquainted aspect to the session as well.

The Camp David gathering, the largest collection of foreign leaders ever at the presidential retreat, is the first G-8 meeting for Hollande, for Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. In what has been widely viewed as a snub, Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping the G-8. He sent Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.

The meeting comes at a turning point in Europe.

Elections in France and Greece have signaled defiance toward the fiscal austerity measures that Merkel has pushed for the most indebted eurozone countries. European countries are straining under high borrowing rates. The drastic cuts in spending and government layoffs were designed to address massive national debts but they have also caused short-term economic distress and joblessness.

On Friday, Spain’s central bank announced that the level of bad loans on the books of Spanish banks was at an 18-year high. That added to concerns about the financial sector in the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy.

The emphasis on economic growth has been welcomed by Obama, who has argued that the stimulus steps he took in 2009 put the U.S. on the road to recovery.

“Europe is still in a difficult state,” Obama told donors in Seattle last week, “partly because they didn’t take some of the decisive steps that we took early on in this recession.”

To what degree the Europeans, and Merkel in particular, agree remains to be seen.

“With Hollande coming into play here, there is going to be a lot of pressure on Germany, not just from Hollande and Obama, but also some of the other countries – Italy and UK – some pressure for Germany to push more toward growth within Europe because they have to get them on board,” said Jeffrey Bergstrand, a former federal reserve economist and now an expert on international finance at the University of Notre Dame.

U.S. officials have been encouraged by recent discussions in Europe to ease up some belt-tightening so that spending cuts aren’t as deep or as swift and to increase spending on public works projects like roads and schools in weaker parts of Europe. They also point to Germany’s recent decision to negotiate higher public sector wages, a move they say could have a positive ripple effect on demand.

Merkel herself has made conciliatory gestures, saying in a television interview this week that she was open to helping stimulate the Greek economy provided Greece honored pledges to shrink its debt.

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ROSH HAAYIN, Israel – Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi has begun rolling out the world’s first nationwide electric car network. Now, will the drivers come?

After more than $400 million in outlays and months behind schedule, dozens of electric cars have hit the road in Israel, the test site Agassi chose for his Better Place venture. Four stations where the cars can get a new dose of juice when their batteries run out are operating, and the plan is to ramp that number up within months.

The concept: to wean the world from oil and eliminate the biggest hurdles to environmentally friendly electric cars – high cost and limited range.

To do this, Better Place has jettisoned the fixed battery. Instead, drivers can swap their depleted batteries for fully charged ones at a network of stations, receiving a full, 160-kilometer (100-mile) range in five minutes. Better Place owns the batteries, bringing down the purchase price of the cars using the network.

People driving shorter distances, the vast majority of customers, can plug in their batteries each day to chargers installed at their homes, offices and public locations, which will fully recharge in six to eight hours.

He faces a wall of skepticism. A major concern is “range anxiety”: Will the car conk out because its battery is drained, stranding the driver in a dicey neighborhood, en route to the hospital, or with three wailing kids in back?

Rising fuel prices worldwide still haven’t sent electric car sales surging, noted U.S.-based automotive expert John McElroy. “It may not be an energy price issue,” he said. “Consumers may simply decide that electric cars don’t offer the range they need.”

Agassi, a former top executive at software giant SAP AG, said he is ready to prove his doubters wrong. “We’re driving a car that most people said would be a fantasy,” he said.

The swappable battery model aims to reassure drivers about range and show they don’t need to sacrifice convenience or cash to switch to electric.

So far, the four Better Place battery stations are set up in central and northern Israel. During the second half of the year, around 40 stations are due to be operating across the country. But even before that, the company says enough will be up that a motorist could make the 500-kilometer (300-mile) drive from Israel’s northern tip to its southern end.

Agassi has raised $750 million from investors including General Electric Co. and HSBC Holdings PLC since founding Better Place 4 1/2 years ago.

French automaker Renault has begun selling a sedan, the Fluence, customized to use the stations, priced in Israel at roughly $32,000, comparable to other sedans sold here. Currently, about 140 are on the road, most driven by Better Place employees.

The Fluence should start becoming available to the general public within weeks. Leasing companies, which buy about two-thirds of the more than 200,000 new cars sold annually in Israel, have ordered more than 1,800, and private customers have ordered several hundred more.

Compared to electric or hybrid cars in other markets, the sales numbers in this nation of nearly 8 million might not be as humble as they seem: In 2011, Chevrolet sold about 7,700 Volts and Nissan sold under 10,000 LEAFs in the U.S., which has a population of more than 310 million.

“It interests all fleet managers we talk to,” said Shai Dahan, CEO of Eldan Transportation, a top Israeli leasing group.

Better Place, which had promised to have thousands of cars on the road last year, acknowledges the rollout is behind schedule, mostly because of bureaucratic hurdles and production issues at Renault.

Better Place has also spent years testing its integrated system designed to allow its operation center, which is connected to every car, to monitor the vehicles and correct problems remotely. For instance, its software notifies drivers when their batteries are running low and directs them to the nearest switching station.

Israel sales director Zohar Bali predicts up to 5,000 Fluences will be silently running on Israeli roads and highways within a year.

Israel was chosen for the experiment in part because of its tech-savvy population. Also, with 80 percent of the population living in a narrow, densely populated stretch along the Mediterranean coast, it provides a perfect laboratory for the charging network.

Better Place claims it can shave up to 20 percent off the annual cost of owning a car, especially if gas prices, now around $8 a gallon here, continue to rise. Drivers buy access to the switching stations and charging spots through a monthly package ranging from under $300 to over $500, depending on mileage.

Israelis are taking notice. Better Place says more than 80,000 people have trekked to its visitor’s center, situated at an abandoned oil reserves depot outside Tel Aviv.

What happens in Israel could decide how broadly Better Place deploys.

So far the Fluence is the only model compatible with the grid, but Renault’s Middle East director, Jean-Christophe Pierson, says the company is considering a more compact model. Better Place is also in contact with other carmakers.

Denmark is set to become Better Place’s second launch site this year. Australia is to become its first major market, with deployment in the capital, Canberra, also this year. Small-scale projects are in place in Hawaii and California. Amsterdam is the next European target after Denmark.

The company also has its sights set on China, where it already has opened a demonstration battery switching station.

Agassi sees the “tipping point” for electric cars coming in two to three years, propelled by dropping prices of cars and batteries. By 2017, he expects 50 percent of all new car sales in Israel to be electric.

The largest investor is The Israel Corp., whose holdings include Israel’s biggest oil refinery and deep water oil drilling.

Idan Ofer, whose family controls The Israel Corp. and who serves as Better Place’s chairman, said he saw no contradiction between his oil and clean-tech holdings.

Film giant Kodak “knew about digital photography. And look what happened. They still went bankrupt because they didn’t do anything about it,” observed Ofer. “There are many examples. I don’t want to be there.”

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NEW YORK – In the hours before Facebook’s stock began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reminded the company’s 3,500 employees not to get caught up in the hoopla surrounding its long-awaited initial public offering.

“Right now this all seems like a big deal,” Zuckerberg said before he pushed a button that rang Nasdaq’s opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, Calif. “Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing, our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”

Facebook’s IPO, it turns out, wasn’t as big a deal as expected.

One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note Friday, with Facebook’s stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing.

That means the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

It also gave 28-year-old Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.

But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the increase of six-tenths of one percent was a letdown.

“This is like kissing your sister,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. “With all the drumbeats and hype, I don’t think there’ll be barroom bragging tonight.”

Added Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital: “It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been. But I don’t think we should view it as a failure.”

Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the IPO priced the stock in an appropriate range.

It was also good for ordinary investors, who are mostly shut out from the IPO price and have to buy the stock in the open market on day one. They got a chance to buy all day at a price not much above $38.

And it was good for early investors in the company, who owned more than half the 421 million shares made available in the IPO. Had the stock shot to $60 Friday morning, those early investors would have felt they hadn’t gotten enough money for their stakes.

The 421 million shares that were sold fetched $16 billion and represented 15 percent of the company’s stock. Facebook got $7 billion, and the early investors $9 billion. The other 85 percent of Facebook’s stock is owned by Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, employees and early investors. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004. Its stock rose 18 percent on day one.

Here was Facebook’s “timeline” Friday, trading under the symbol “FB” on the Nasdaq Stock Market:

The stock opened at 11:30 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. It briefly traded as high as $45 and by noon was at $40.40. It fluttered throughout the afternoon and hugged the $38 mark for much of the final hour, before closing at $38.23.

By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.

TD Ameritrade reported that in the first 45 minutes of trading, Facebook accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.

By comparison, on its first day back on the stock market, in November 2010, General Motors represented 7 percent of trades on the online brokerage.

Steve Quirk, who oversees trading strategy at TD Ameritrade, said that about 60,000 orders were lined up before Facebook opened.

Technical glitches delayed the start of Facebook’s trading by a half-hour. The Securities and Exchange Commission also is investigating problems traders encountered in changing and canceling their orders.

Other social media companies, most of which have gone public in the last year, saw their shares plummet when it became clear what kind of reception Facebook was getting in the public market. Shares of game-maker Zynga Inc. and reviews site Yelp Inc. both hit all-time lows.

The stock market will now begin assigning a dollar value to Facebook based primarily on its financial performance. If Facebook can continue to increase its revenue and profit at the rate it has the past few years, the stock should rise. Google reported strong earnings after it became a public company, and its stock price more than tripled the first year, from $85 to $280.

Facebook’s stock price will also depend somewhat on broad economic forces, as well as the whims of investors.

Facebook is one of those rare companies whose IPO transcends Wall Street’s money lust. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting its 900 million users around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.

Most tech companies going public want a big rise in their debut to show they’re “strong, dynamic companies standing out in the crowd,” said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop, but Facebook already has that image, and so may not care.

Few of the Internet companies to go public recently have been profitable. But Facebook had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In 2011, it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, up from earnings of $606 million and revenue of $2 billion a year earlier.

That’s a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and had revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as “FarmVille.”

Facebook’s public debut marked a milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications’ IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a “new economy.”

It took Google Inc.’s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a revolutionary idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.

Facebook’s IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company’s cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to bring in other talented engineers and promising technology. That’s what Google has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don’t include Google’s pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.

Zuckerberg’s biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion in April. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on Facebook’s current share price, Instagram is in line to receive about $1.2 billion.

Friday’s debut, though, resulted in deals worth much less.

Alper Aydinoglu, a DePaul University student who got 50 shares via Etrade at $38, said he was “disappointed with the first day of trading.”

His gain on paper: $11.50, but that was before Etrade’s standard commission of $9.99.

Aydinoglu still called it an excellent learning opportunity.

“On top of everything, I now have the bragging rights that I participated in one of the most popular IPOs of all time.”

—

AP Technology Writers Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Peter Svensson in New York, Associated Press Writer Marcus Wohlsen in Menlo Park, Calif., and AP Business Writers Bernard Condon, Pallavi Gogoi and Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to this story.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

CAMP DAVID, Md. – President Barack Obama and leaders of other major industrial powers grappled Friday with options to solidify world resolve against development of an Iranian nuclear bomb and encourage a more forceful response to worsening violence in Syria.

Obama will have the ear of key players on both issues during back-to-back G-8 and NATO summits that will be dominated with discussions of European economic woes and Afghanistan. Talks about Syria and Iran will be aimed directly and indirectly at Russia, a sometime protector of both Iran and Syria and the chief blockade to such U.S. goals as an arms embargo on Syria.

The gatherings come in the shadow of the eurozone debt crisis and plummeting public support for the war in Afghanistan. Political and economic chaos in Greece and Spain underscored just how fragile Europe’s economy remains after an eviscerating austerity regime. Germany’s finance minister predicted Friday that the crisis could last up to another two years.

Most of the leaders are part of overlapping international coalitions formed to address the Iranian nuclear problem and the newer crisis in Syria, where an estimated 9,000 people have died in more than a year of violence that arose from the pro-democracy Arab uprisings.

Faced with implacable Russian opposition to significant new United Nations punishments on the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials are trying to get consensus among other allies about ways to promote Assad’s ouster.

A senior U.S. official said one goal of Friday’s closed-door discussion at the secluded presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., was to impress on Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that other nations that share Russia’s usual role at the forefront of international diplomacy are seeking ways to address the Syria debacle without Russian help.

Obama greeted each leader by name, calling Medvedev “my friend,” before the group went inside for dinner.

The United States wants to avoid escalating a confrontation with Moscow over Syria, the official said, but wants Medvedev to hear the depth of international outrage. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal diplomacy.

A senior Obama administration official said Friday night that the Group of Eight leaders unified behind a dual track effort of sanctions and diplomacy toward Iran and agreed to focus on political transition in Syria.

The eight leaders gathered for a dinner of more than two hours in the secluded woods of Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the private session.

Russia is a partner with the United States and European nations in containing Iran’s nuclear program, although with China it has blocked the most severe penalties the United Nations Security Council might impose. A U.N.-affiliated negotiating group including Russia will meet with Iranian officials next week in Baghdad, Iraq.

On Iran, the U.S. official said each of the leaders, including Medvedev, indicated that Iran has the burden of proving that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

As for Syria, the official said the leaders continued to back the peace plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan brokered in April, including its call for political transition. But they did not go beyond that.

U.S. officials say the economic pressure of sanctions is key to drawing Iran back to the bargaining table this spring after a long hiatus.

“Each member of the G-8 is a core member of this sanctions effort,” White House national security adviser Thomas Donilon said Thursday. “Each member has been absolutely essential to really putting in place what has been an extraordinarily effective and, I think most people would say, surprisingly effective sanctions effort.”

Iran says it is enriching only to create nuclear fuel. Its refusal to halt enrichment has provoked U.N. and other sanctions, including U.S. and European Union penalties meant to cripple its oil exports – its main revenue source – that are to fully take effect in a few weeks.

“The message will be that the Iranians should seize this opportunity” for talks, Donilon said. “And while this goes on, in parallel, the sanctions and pressure effort will continue, led by the United States and the others who will be at the table on Friday evening.”

Syria is a much harder case, in part because Russia and China oppose U.N. action that could set a precedent for outside interference in internal ethnic or human rights matters, and partly because there is no international appetite for a military confrontation with Assad.

Syrian forces on Friday fired on protesters holding the largest opposition marches yet in Aleppo, a sign of rising anti-regime sentiment in the country’s biggest city, which has largely remained supportive of President Bashar Assad throughout the 15-month uprising.

The head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria warned that neither his team nor armed action could solve the country’s crisis, and called on all sides to discuss a solution. But the regime kept up its assaults on opposition areas and protests, while the head of Syria’s largest exile opposition group dismissed the U.N.’s plan as unrealistic.

The White House abruptly moved the G-8 session to Camp David earlier this spring, after months of planning for a Chicago venue. A desire for seclusion and intimacy was one reason and a gesture to Russia was another.

Russia is opposed to a NATO plan for a missile defense shield in Europe that will be detailed at the NATO summit Sunday in Chicago, causing Russian President Vladimir Putin to let NATO know he did not want to be invited to the alliance meeting.

Separating the two sessions was supposed to make it easier for Putin to attend one and not the other. But Putin made his own abrupt change, telling Obama last week that he would skip the gathering and send Medvedev in his place.

The administration denied speculation that the sessions were moved for security reasons. Past G-8 meetings have seen large and sometimes violent protests by activists opposed to the increasing globalization of world economies. Street violence overshadowed the 2001 summit in Genoa, Italy. Critics have accused the G-8 of representing the interests of an elite group of industrialized nations to the detriment of the needs of the wider world. Since Genoa, the meetings have been held in increasingly isolated locations to shield leaders from protests, playing into criticism of the G-8′s closed-door image.

Obama, an infrequent visitor to Camp David, is putting the presidential hideaway on full display for the G-8, the largest gathering of foreign leaders ever to assemble there. The leaders will stroll leafy paths to rustic meetings halls and bed down in the 11 residential cabins. Four African leaders will join them for lunch Saturday.

The G-8 is made up of the leaders of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. The meetings began in 1975 at a forum instigated by France, where leaders of the six largest economic powers agreed to annual meetings. Canada joined a year later, making it the G-7. Russia was brought into the organization in 1997, six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The European Union is represented but is not granted the power to act as host of the annual sessions or to serve as the rotating leader.

Obama holds the chairmanship this year.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

NEW YORK – It was barely a “like” and definitely not a “love” from Facebook investors as the online social network’s stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday.

One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note, with Facebook’s stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing.

That meant the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

It also gave 28-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.

“Going public is an important milestone in our history,” Zuckerberg said before he pushed a button that rang Nasdaq’s opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, Calif. “But here’s the thing: Our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”

But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the increase of six-tenths of one percent was a letdown.

“This is like kissing your sister,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. “With all the drumbeats and hype, I don’t think there’ll be barroom bragging tonight.”

Added Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital: “It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been. But I don’t think we should view it as a failure.”

Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the IPO priced the stock in an appropriate range.

It was also good for ordinary investors, who are mostly shut out from the IPO price and have to buy the stock in the open market on day one. They got a chance to buy all day at a price not much above $38.

And it was good for early investors in the company, who owned more than half the 421 million shares made available in the IPO. Had the stock shot to $60 Friday morning, those early investors would have felt they hadn’t gotten enough money for their stakes.

The 421 million shares that were sold fetched $16 billion and represented 15 percent of the company’s stock. Facebook got $7 billion, and the early investors $9 billion. The other 85 percent of Facebook’s stock is owned by Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, employees and early investors. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004. Its stock rose 18 percent on day one.

Here was Facebook’s “timeline” Friday, trading under the symbol “FB” on the Nasdaq Stock Market:

The stock opened at 11:30 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. It briefly traded as high as $45 and by noon was at $40.40. It fluttered throughout the afternoon and hugged the $38 mark for much of the final hour, before closing at $38.23.

By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.

TD Ameritrade reported that in the first 45 minutes of trading, Facebook accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.

By comparison, on its first day back on the stock market, in November 2010, General Motors represented 7 percent of trades on the online brokerage.

Steve Quirk, who oversees trading strategy at TD Ameritrade, said that about 60,000 orders were lined up before Facebook opened.

Technical glitches delayed the start of Facebook’s trading by a half-hour. The Securities and Exchange Commission also is investigating problems traders encountered in changing and canceling their orders.

Other social media companies, most of which have gone public in the last year, saw their shares plummet when it became clear what kind of reception Facebook was getting in the public market. Shares of game-maker Zynga Inc. and reviews site Yelp Inc. both hit all-time lows.

The stock market will now begin assigning a dollar value to Facebook based primarily on its financial performance. If Facebook can continue to increase its revenue and profit at the rate it has the past few years, the stock should rise. Google reported strong earnings after it became a public company, and its stock price more than tripled the first year, from $85 to $280.

Facebook’s stock price will also depend somewhat on broad economic forces, as well as the whims of investors.

Facebook is one of those rare companies whose IPO transcends Wall Street’s money lust. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting its 900 million users around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.

Most tech companies going public want a big rise in their debut to show they’re “strong, dynamic companies standing out in the crowd,” said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop, but Facebook already has that image, and so may not care.

Few of the Internet companies to go public recently have been profitable. But Facebook had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In 2011, it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, up from earnings of $606 million and revenue of $2 billion a year earlier.

That’s a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and had revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as “FarmVille.”

Facebook’s public debut marked a milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications’ IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a “new economy.”

It took Google Inc.’s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a revolutionary idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.

Facebook’s IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company’s cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to bring in other talented engineers and promising technology. That’s what Google has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don’t include Google’s pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.

Zuckerberg’s biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion in April. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on Facebook’s current share price, Instagram is in line to receive about $1.2 billion.

Friday’s debut, though, resulted in deals worth much less.

Alper Aydinoglu, a DePaul University student who got 50 shares via Etrade at $38, said he was “disappointed with the first day of trading.”

His gain on paper: $11.50, but that was before Etrade’s standard commission of $9.99.

Aydinoglu still called it an excellent learning opportunity.

“On top of everything, I now have the bragging rights that I participated in one of the most popular IPOs of all time.”

—

AP Technology Writers Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Peter Svensson in New York, Associated Press Writer Marcus Wohlsen in Menlo Park, Calif., and AP Business Writers Bernard Condon, Pallavi Gogoi and Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to this story.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

NEW YORK – It was barely a “like” and definitely not a “love” from Facebook investors as the online social network’s stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday.

One of the most highly anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a bland note, with Facebook’s stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing.

That meant the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room is worth about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

It also gave 28-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.

“Going public is an important milestone in our history,” Zuckerberg said before he symbolically rang Nasdaq’s opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, Calif. “But here’s the thing: Our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”

But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the single-digit increase was somewhat of a letdown.

“This is like kissing your sister,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. “With all the drumbeats and hype, I don’t think there’ll be barroom bragging tonight.”

Added Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital:

“It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been,” he said. “But I don’t think we should view it as a failure.”

Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the IPO priced the stock in an appropriate range.

And it was good for ordinary investors, who are often shut out from IPOs or buy the stock at a high price on day one.

Facebook offered 15 percent of its available stock in the IPO, so there was enough to meet demand. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004 – and rose 18 percent on day one.

Here was Facebook’s “timeline” Friday, trading under the symbol “FB” on the Nasdaq Stock Market:

The stock opened at 11:30 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. It briefly traded at one point as high as $45 and by noon was at $40.40. It fluttered throughout the afternoon and hugged the $38 mark for much of the final hour, before closing at $38.23.

By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.

TD Ameritrade reported that in the first 45 minutes of trading, Facebook accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.

By comparison, on its first day back on the stock market, in November 2010, General Motors represented 7 percent of overall trades on the online brokerage.

Steve Quirk, who oversees trading strategy at TD Ameritrade, said that about 60,000 orders were lined up before Facebook opened.

Other social-media companies, most of whom have gone public in the last year, saw their shares plummet when it became clear what kind of reception Facebook was getting in the public market. Shares of game-maker Zynga Inc. and reviews site Yelp Inc. both hit all-time lows.

The stock market will now begin assigning a dollar value to Facebook that will rise and fall with investor whims. It will be subject to broad economic forces and held accountable for profit it earns -or loses- from one quarter to the next.

Facebook is one of those rare companies whose IPO transcends Wall Street’s money lust. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting its 900 million users around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.

Most tech companies going public want a big rise in their debut to show they’re “strong, dynamic companies standing out in the crowd,” said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop, but Facebook already has that image, and so may not care.

What’s more, he said, most of the money raised in the IPO – $9 billion of $16 billion – went to early investors who want the highest price possible IPO price, and so they’re likely happy with the modest firs-day rise.

Facebook is one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That’s a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as “FarmVille.”

Facebook’s public debut marked a new milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications’ IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a “new economy.”

It took Google Inc.’s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a disruptive idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.

Facebook’s IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company’s cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to being in other talented engineers and promising technology. That’s what has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don’t include Google’s still-pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.

Zuckerberg’s biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on Facebook’s current share price, Instagram is in line to receive about $1.2 billion.

Friday’s debut, though, resulted in deals worth much less.

Alper Aydinoglu, a DePaul University student who got 50 shares via Etrade at $38, said he was “disappointed with the first day of trading.”

His gain on paper: $11.50, but that was before Etrade’s standard commission of $9.99.

Aydinoglu still called it an excellent learning opportunity.

“On top of everything, I now have the bragging rights that I participated in one of the most popular IPOs of all time.”

—

AP Technology Writers Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Peter Svensson in New York, and AP Business Writers Bernard Condon, Pallavi Gogoi and Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to this story.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

NEW YORK – After all the hype, Facebook’s first day as a public company ended where it began.

In its much-anticipated debut on the Nasdaq Stock Market, Facebook’s stock closed Friday at $38.23, up 23 cents. It had been priced at $38 per share on Thursday night.

After an anxiety-filled half-hour delay, its stock began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time as investors were finally able to put a dollar value on the company that turned online social networking into a global cultural phenomenon.

The stock opened at 11:32 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. By noon, it was up again at $40.40, a 6 percent increase. It fluttered throughout the afternoon, but it never hit the double-digit jump that many Facebook-watchers had expected. By the end of the day, more than 500 million shares had changed hands

The closing price means Facebook is worth about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonalds and storied Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

But as many people looked for a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the single-digit increase was somewhat of a letdown.

“It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been,” said Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital. “But I don’t think we should view it as a failure.”

Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the initial public offering priced the stock in an appropriate range. It’s also a supply and demand issue. Facebook offered nearly 20 percent of its available stock in the IPO, so there was enough to meet demand. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004 – and rose 18 percent on day one.

To IPOdesktop’s Francis Gaskins, it means mom-and-pop investors are becoming “much more educated and careful” about not buying into hype. And he said that the banks taking Facebook public have learned from the 10 IPOs of social media companies in the past year and are better able to gauge how much stock to make available in an initial offering.

It might not have been possible for the social network to live up to the hype that led up to its IPO. It’s Facebook, after all, a place where people are emotionally invested in endless online diversions and rekindled friendships, an endless depository of baby photos, favorite songs and fleeting memories.

“It’s probably one of the first times there has been an IPO where everyone sort of has a stake in the outcome,” said Gartner analyst Brian Blau. While most Facebook users won’t see a penny from the offering, they are all intimately familiar with the company.

Earlier Friday, the company’s 28-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, smiled as he rang the opening bell from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Surrounded by cheering Facebook employees and wearing his signature hoodie, he pushed the button that signals the opening of the stock market in New York. The morning’s events followed an all-night “hackathon” at the company, where engineers stayed up coding software and conjuring up new ideas for Facebook and its 900 million users.

“Right now this all seems like a big deal. Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing, our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected,” Zuckerberg said. “In the past eight years, all of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of and I can’t wait to see what you guys all do going forward.”

Afterward, employees tried to get back to business as usual, building the company under immense new pressure to meet shareholders’ expectations. To remind everyone not to get caught up in the hoopla, Facebook’s employees were given t-shirts that read “Stay focused & keep hacking.”

On Thursday, Facebook and the investment bankers settled on a price of $38 per share. The company and its early investors raised $16 billion in the offering, which valued Facebook at $104 billion. That makes Facebook the most valuable U.S. company to ever go public.

Now, the stock market will begin assigning a dollar value to Facebook that will rise and fall with investor whims. It will be subject to broad economic forces and held accountable for profit it earns -or loses- from one quarter to the next.

But Facebook is a rare company whose IPO transcends Wall Street’s money lust. It is a cultural touchstone for the way technology reshapes our lives. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.

It has done so while becoming one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That’s a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as “FarmVille.”

Facebook’s public debut marks a new milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications’ IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a “new economy”.

It took Google’s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a disruptive idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.

Facebook’s IPO heralds a new phase of the Internet’s evolution. This social era makes connections among people as important as Google’s massive index of Web links. Still, the IPO will raise new pressures for Facebook to generate more revenue, perhaps by digging further into the trove of revealing information that people share on the network to sell even more targeted ads.

The IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company’s cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to being in other talented engineers and promising technology. That’s what has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don’t include Google’s still-pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.

Zuckerberg’s biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on the $38 price for Facebook’s stock, Instagram is in line to receive nearly $1.2 billion.

Though Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell from California, people outside the stock market in Times Square snapped photos of a big blue Facebook sign that lit up the building. Some of them used their smart phones to check in to the Nasdaq on Facebook. Frederick Nolde, who was visiting from Richmond, Va., said he bought 100 shares through the online brokerage eTrade.

He thinks the company is worth $100 billion. “I think Google is a good comparison and it’s worth $200 to 300 billion. The real question is how they do in mobile. If they can figure that out they’ll do well.”

In Menlo Park, some mourned the one that got away. Venture capitalist Mark Siegel visited Facebook’s headquarters to ponder. Like many of his fellow tech startup investors with offices a short drive from Facebook on Silicon Valley’s famed Sand Hill Road, Siegel said he had chances to back Facebook early on but didn’t.

He said at the time, when competing social networks like Friendster and MySpace still had clout, it wasn’t clear that Facebook would come out on top.

“In hindsight, any price would have been a good price to pay,” said Siegel, a managing director at Menlo Ventures.

There’s still time. Bruno del Ama, the CEO of asset management firm Global X Funds, is waiting until Thursday, to get in on Facebook.

“On the first day you see a tremendous amount of volatility,” he said. In three days, short-sellers will be able to sell the stock, he added, so by day five, investors should see more stability. Global X has a fund focused on social media stocks, and del Ama expects “significant growth” in the sector in the coming decade. Facebook, right now, is the crown jewel of the space. And it’s likely here to stay, by virtue of its position.

“Once companies have built a network, it’s really difficult to displace them,” del Ama said, adding that while massive companies such as Google are trying to compete with Facebook – and may have better technology – “we care about where our friends are.”

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AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco, Associated Press Reporter Marcus Wohlsen in Menlo Park, AP Business Writers Bernard Condon, Pallavi Gogoi and Joseph Pisani in New York contributed to this story.

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