Status update: Facebook's first year as a public company (pictures)

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. It was the age of Facebook's initial public offering -- and after one year, there have been plenty of highs and lows.
Here, we see Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company celebrating Facebook's listing on the Nasdaq on May 18, 2012.

With a highly anticipated IPO, Facebook's stock took a battering following the Nasdaq listing. Debuting for $38 a share, it's since gone as low as $17.55.

Facebook's public listing meant that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's empire was no longer solely in his control. It opened the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company to outside criticism and forced its business end to make new connections and find new sources for growth and revenue.

In his first live interview since the IPO, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down for a conversation with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (left) at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg took a few minutes to answer audience questions following his conversation with Michael Arrington at TechCrunch Disrupt.

When Mark Zuckerberg and company spoke in January about the Facebook Gifts feature, they were tackling one of the social network's best hopes for making money from somewhere other than advertising -- yet the prospect has yet to deliver.

Facebook's Graph Search was intended to help people find more of what they're looking for on Facebook and discover connections between the people, places, and things they already interact with.

Like many Facebook products, the idea of such a comprehensive network search was met with skepticism by privacy critics.

This year Facebook unveiled a new News Feed, a bigger and better experience aiming to make Facebook more unified across devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook Home earlier this year. Facebook runs on top of the Android operating system -- and is as close to a long-rumored Facebook Phone as we'll ever get.

When you open your Facebook Home-compatible phone, like the HTC First, you'll see photos in your news feed make up the wallpaper. While the overlay cycles through pictures, you can interact with the text, and other features, without disrupting the flow.

Home puts Facebook front and center on your phone -- but is it too much Facebook?

Facebook Home acts almost as its own Facebook operating system stacked on top of the Android OS.