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The much anticipated Facebook IPO is expected to price tonight, with stock beginning to trade on Friday. But how will investors react – and how will Facebook manage the transition from private to public company?

It’s no surprise that the press is full of articles about how 28-year old founder Mark Zuckerberg runs the company, particularly in light of the fact that he owns 57% of the voting stock, which, according to Steven Johnson in Wired Magazine’s “Can Anything Take Down the Facebook Juggernaut,” gives him “a command over the company’s destiny that far outstrips anything Bill Gates ever had.”

One of the concerns investors have about the obstacles to the company’s seemingly unstoppable growth is how few clicks Facebook advertising actually acquire. According to a recent AP-CNBC poll, published in an article by Kayla Tuasche and Jesse Bergman, “As Investors Fawn Over Facebook, Poll Finds User Distrust, Apathy,”  these disturbing statistics emerge:

• More than 57 percent of Facebook users polled never click on ads or other sponsored content
• Twenty-six percent only rarely click on ads
• A mere four percent of users often click on ads

Yet advertising revenue is an enormous part of Facebook’s IPO pitch. The company reported $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, according to the New York Times’s Tanzina Vega, who reported on General Motor’s defection from the roster of Facebook advertisers, withdrawing about $10 million annually. “…the loss of $10 million in ad dollars does not represent a financial disaster but it is a public-relations headache coming so close to the company’s eagerly anticipated public offering,” stated Vega in “Ahead of I.P.O., G.M. to Quit Advertising on Facebook.”  Because General Motors is the third-largest advertiser in the U.S., Vega claims, analysts feel the decision will cause other marketers to question the viability of their advertising on Facebook.

Another concern potential investors – and, indeed, Facebook users themselves – share is a concern over privacy that Facebook itself seems to dismiss almost callously. Johnson’s Wired article cites the sheer magnitude of Facebook’s growth – “It took the Internet 30 years to reach 750 million users. It took Facebook 8” – and says:

Troublesome corporate behavior is easier to swallow when there are other choices out there, when you have the option to take your business to another store down the street. But when one company owns the whole street, each little transgression is amplified…. Facebook, we’re told, is a threat to core social values, to privacy, to the web itself.

The AP-CNBC poll states that “59 percent of respondents said that they have little to no trust to keep their information private.” This despite the fact that its 901 million monthly active users continue to spend six to seven hours per month on the site.  New applications, such as Open Graph, unilaterally post personal data, including status messages, notes, photos, and videos publicly.

To its credit, Facebook has made some moves to address privacy concerns. According to Johnson, there are dozens of separate options in the privacy settings that can be manipulated to ensure privacy.  Facebook is used to “expanding the boundaries of social sharing and then reacting to users and critics when it goes too far.”

In fact, according to Shaydi Raice in The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook’s New R&D Machine,” Facebook is actively changing its approach to surprising its users with the results of “all night coding sessions known as ‘hackathons.’”  Using the still controversial Timeline as an example, Raice points out that the new feature was the “culmination of an 18-month process that included dozens of test versions and multiple focus groups.” While there is still anger over Timeline with Facebook’s user base, Raice claims that “the anger is more muted” due to Facebook’s extended introduction of the feature. Considering the past protests by users over features such as the News Feed feature or privacy concerns, this more conservative backlash shows a growing maturity within the company. Raice quotes Chris Fox, Facebook’s vice president of product, as saying, “I think we’ve gotten a lot more humble.”

A lot more humble or not, it still remains to be seen if Facebook can overcome these obstacles along with many others to reassure potential investors on the eve of their IPO. As CNBC says, “Charting a future course may prove more difficult than meets the eye for the company…and navigating under the daily pressures of a public company could prove even more difficult.”