Which technology initial public offerings will succeed?

Many people remember the dot-com bubble that took place from approximately 1995 to 2000. How could anyone forget the pets.com puppet?

Now another wave of Internet companies are going public. Let's take a look at how those that already have gone public have fared:

• Zynga, Inc. (ZNGA) -- The developer of social games such as FarmVille had its initial public offering (IPO) last week, and the stock fell 5% on its first day of trading.
• LinkedIn Corporation (LNKD) -- The "world's largest professional network" debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in May. On the first day of trading, the stock closed at $94.25; today it trades around $65.
• Groupon, Inc. (GRPN) -- This deal-of-the-day website has been publicly traded since early November. The stock ended the first day of trading at $26.11 and currently trades at around $22.
• Pandora Media, Inc. (P) -- The Internet radio company closed its first day of trading back in June at $17.42. Today it trades at just under $10.

Of course, the blockbuster expected IPO in 2012 will be Facebook. The Facebook IPO is expected to create at least a thousand millionaires and could value the company at as much as $100 billion.

From the looks of how the four "social stocks" referenced above have performed, hopefully investors are remembering the dot-com bubble and focusing on traditional metrics such as the P/E ratio.