Facebook have begun trading shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market today, priced at $38 which makes the eight year old company, worth a staggering $104 billion.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg officially opened the day's trading on the Nasdaq exchange via a remote video link at the Facebook HQ in California. He rang a loud bell for the trading to start.

The Initial Public Offer of $16 billion is the biggest of any technology company in history, and makes Facebook more valuable than McDonalds and Disney.

Floating on the stock market will earn the 28-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a whopping $19 billion, just eight years after he created the website in his Harvard bedroom.

But it's not all plain sailing for the website, as a recent admission that demand for Facebook's smartphone applications has outstripped the revenue they generate, lead to investors claiming the site had unofficially issued its first profit warning.

Advertising provides Facebook with 82% of its quarterly revenue, but with almost half of its 900 million users logging in through the profitless smartphone apps each month, Zuckerberg and his team will have to find alternative ways of making money if the site is to continue to flourish.