Facebook, Groupon Leaders in the Private Company Market

Facebook accounted for the majority of private company stock transactions for a second straight quarter, according to SecondMarket's recently released third-quarter report. The social networking site commanded 37 percent of the trading through SecondMarket, a private company stock trading startup with a Q3 volume of more than $73 million worth of stocks.

GlobalLogic was not far behind with 35 percent of the transactions, and Acronis and Gamefly also had strong quarters. Facebook dominated the buy-side interest as well with 34.1 percent, followed in the distance by Twitter's 5.8 percent. The remaining private companies in the top 10 of that category were LinkedIn, Zynga, Craigslist, Yelp, Digg, Kayak, Etsy and the author of the report, SecondMarket.

Groupon recorded the fastest growing buy-side interest with an increase of 63 percent in the past three months. Other companies showing significant growth on the buy side included Pandora, Zipcar, Trulia and Bloom Energy.