Tech IPOs grapple with privacy

For social media start-ups, going public these days involves more than sprucing up business and financial models. Also showing up in the blogs and securities filings of companies such as Groupon, LinkedIn, Pandora and Zynga is a new consideration: privacy.

These social networking firms after all are in the business of data — collecting, sharing and sometime selling user information for targeted ads. They want to signal to investors that they have a plan to make money from the trove of information they have on users. So as federal lawmakers contemplate new online privacy laws and regulators take up investigations of consumer protection violations, this year’s flood of social networking IPOs are looking anew at how those activities in Washington, D.C., could affect their stock market prospects.