Facebook founding CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the NASDAQ’s opening bell this morning, and investors are getting ready to snatch up shares of the social media behemoth for $38 a pop. The initial public offering will raise approximately $16 billion, a sum that will skyrocket the company’s valuation to $104 billion.

The stock’s price is on the higher end of the $34 to $38 forecast released earlier this week.

Starting today Facebook will be holding on to two more records: the second largest IPO ever after Visa’s, and the company with the highest valuation on record.  But at the same time the social network reported revenue of only $1 billion  in the first quarter of 2012, and is currently occupying the 909^th spot on the stock exchange in terms of annual revenue.

Facebook is not likely to run out of money anytime soon, and claims to have 900 million registered accounts, but just over a decade after the dot-com bubble, monetization still remains a big topic.  The Silicon Valley powerhouse currently lives off royalties from targeted advertising, and while its early backers will undoubtedly realize a massive return on investment today, the company will still have a lot of ground to cover on the long run.

In this regard, the market seems to have no shortage of optimism. That is partially thanks to the trends that are the key drivers behind Facebook, and in which the latter is only becoming more and more invested.  These key trends are helping to pump valuation for another rising star–Pinterest.

“Both Facebook’s IPO and Pinterest’s $100 million investment [a content sharing service that announces Series C funding yesterday] from a leading ecommerce provider highlight the massive opportunity that the intersection of mobile, social and commerce present,” said Anne Frisbie, the VP for InMobi North America. “InMobi believes that mobile-social commerce is one of the largest transformative revolutions that we are undergoing and that this intersection fundamentally changes how consumers find, connect, share and buy products around the world.”

As online networks take center stage for investments and stock offering these past few months, from Groupon to Facebook, it’s clear that we’re entering a new era where expectations are high for social networks and mobile monetization in particular, as localization becomes increasingly relevant in the social space.