The closing bell has sounded on Facebook's first day as a public company, and the result could safely be characterized as "meh."

The social network gets the honor of being the biggest debut for a technology company in U.S. stock market history, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild enjoyed only a fractional gain on its initial public offering price of $38 a share. 

Also read: Facebook IPO: 5 Warning Signs That Have Investors Worried [4]

The site's stock closed the day up 23 cents, or 0.6 percent to $38.23. It slipped from that perch in after-market trading. 

Facebook opened trading at roughly $42 a share, but continued to slip as the hours ticked by in what was a tough climate for social media stock. Zynga, Pandora, and LinkedIn all closed the day down from the start of trading on Friday. 

Despite sputtering on during its NASDAQ coming out, Facebook is still expected to raise between $16 billion and $18 billion from IPO. Moreover, its valuation is now pegged at north of $100 billion.

Facebook's public debut is the third largest IPO in U.S. history, behind the $19.7 billion raised by Visa in 2008 and the $18.1 billion generated by General Motors in 2010, according to Reuters. [5]