Unlike hundreds of other tech bloggers, I confess:  I really haven't been waiting on pins and needles all day to live-blog or scrutinize or analyze the high-anticipated Facebook IPO. These are the benefits, I would argue, of covering ed-tech specifically. (It's also the benefit of still recovering from all those years in grad school -- I'm too poor to buy stocks and too free-spirited to worry about an investment portfolio. You can give me grief over failing to plan for my retirement in the comments.)

Nevertheless, the filing for a $5 billion IPO today by the folks who helped redefine "share," "like," and "friend" is an important moment for the economy, for the Web, for the tech industry, for our culture, and of course for all those early Facebook investors and shareholders.

While many folks are pouring over the accounting that an IPO reveals -- Facebook's profits, the sources of its revenue, and so on -- I'm fascinated by the letter that CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg penned as part of the filing. It's a statement of Zuckerberg's personal philosophy meant to explain his vision for the company.

Wired's Tim Carmody offers an annotated version of the letter -- it's worth a read for Tim's thoughts of what Zuck is "really saying." Below, I've excerpted part of the letter at length, a section called "The Hacker Way." Considering the name and the impetus of this blog, this is the part that interests me most...

You can read the rest of my post over on Inside Higher Ed

Photo credits:  Ludovic Toinel