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Facebook has announced what will likely be the tech industry's biggest Initial Public Offering of stock ever. What do practitioners of feminism, a philosophy centered in the experiences of women, have to say about the political economy of the world's biggest social technology company? They've raised a number of interesting questions so far.

It seems that everyone has an opinion about Facebook's stated goal of being a force for good in the world. Feminists online have also raised questions about the company's unusually exclusive all-male Board of Directors and about mega-powerful COO Sheryl Sandberg's public calls for women to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. As a cultural phenomenon of historic proportion, what does the Facebook IPO mean with regard to gender?

Some weeks ago, I happened to drive by an evangelistic church whose outdoor marquis speaks about as well of the present times as any I've come across. "And there followed hail and fire mixed with blood," it read, "and they were cast upon the Earth. Like us on Facebook!"

The initial public offering of Facebook stock, now likely to come in May, is as much a test of faith as any corporation has ever given its prospective shareholders. To Facebook's credit, its prospectus, as given in its Form S-1 filing yesterday, makes its plea completely and carefully. Many companies provide a perfunctory paragraph to investors under the "Risk Factors" heading. Facebook's entry reads like a self-indictment.

Zynga added a 600-plus-pages addendum to its IPO filing yesterday and it turns out that Zynga and Facebook are intertwined so tightly that it is hard to tell where one company ends and the other starts. The best example is two agreements that the companies came to in May and December of 2010 that reveal the depths of the Zynga/Facebook relationship. What it boils down to is that Zynga and Facebook work so closely together that Zynga might as well be the official game-maker for Facebook. Yet, that is not the case nor will it be. It makes one wonder why Zynga is bothering to go public at all as opposed to just being subsumed as a division within Facebook.

As a company, Zynga has made a big bet on the concept of "play." Now, the company is asking for investors to buy into their concept of play as well.

The social gaming company filed for an initial public offering today, which makes it the fourth major Web 2.0 company to travel down the IPO road this year. It follows LinkedIn and Pandora (both now trading) and Groupon (currently in the "quiet period" after filing earlier in June).

According to a report from CNBC, Facebook is planning a Q1 2012 IPO which could be "pegged at north of $100 billion." The social networking company's IPO may be triggered by a section of the Securities and Exchange Act known as "the 500 rule," which states that a private company with over 500 investors must begin to release quarterly financial information to the SEC, just as public companies do, CNBC explains.

This news comes alongside a second report, which states that Facebook's growth is slowing down in certain key markets, including the U.S.

Groupon has had a terrific ride. Since pivoting from a community action site, it has dominated the mindshare of Internet commerce. Its IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission lays out a lot of that success, including growing from 3 million to 83 million subscribers in one year and generating nearly as much revenue in the first quarter of 2011 as it did in all of 2010.

But that, as they say, is past performance. The key question for potential investors is "How will Groupon do in the years ahead?" There, the IPO filing, doesn't provide much guidance.

Here are five concerns I see.

Groupon, the daily shopping deals service, took its first major step towards an initial public offering today. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company estimates its IPO will be worth $750 million.

It becomes the second major tech company after LinkedIn to aim for the public market in the last month. The difference between Groupon and LinkedIn though is that Groupon makes significant revenue, has been around half as long as LinkedIn and may or may not actually be a technology company. What are the revenue and risk factors for investors thinking about Groupon stock? We take an in-depth look below.

LinkedIn is valued at $8.79 billion after its first day as a public company. Founder and chairman Reid Hoffman and friends are drinking champagne tonight, that is for sure. It is the highest valuation after an IPO of a tech company since Google astonished the world in 2004.

It is mildly amazing for a social network that has never been profitable and never made more than $250 million in a year. What are investors seeing that the rest of us cannot? In a word ... Jobs. This is what Job Board 2.0 has become -- data rich and interactive across a social graph.

LinkedIn, the first of the major social networks to file for an initial public offering, is absolutely killing it out of the gate - the professional networking site's share value debuted at $83 with a valuation northwards of $7 billion.

LinkedIn initially priced its shares at $45 this morning, which was the high end of its target valuation. At one point, shares were trading at $122.70. As of 1 p.m. Eastern, they had dropped to $109.49. LinkedIn's revenue grew from $78.8 million in 2008 to $243 million in 2010. In a pre-IPO filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, the company said that its revenue works in cycles by the season and does not expect to be profitable in 2011.

Jive Software is adding four new members to its board of directors, including one of Mark Zuckerberg's direct reports responsible for technical operations at Facebook; the current president of McAfee Software and the Google technologist responsible for the development of Google Chrome and HTML 5 initiatives.

The move is part of what appearts to be Jive's efforts to prepare for an Initial Public Offering. It shows investors that the company has the clout to achieve a level of strength that positions it to compete even more with its chief target: Microsoft.