Conventional wisdom says that everything changes once a company goes public. Instead of helming your own ship, you now have to kowtow to the voracious Wall Street masters, ever hunting for bigger and better quarterly earnings. You have to play nice with the press, for fear of bad news leading to a short of your stock.

Apple (AAPL) and Netflix (NFLX) have been chummy since last year, but it looks like the chummy relationship might just be about to change for good with the introduction of Apple’s iTV.

In what could be described as the umpteenth report from comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) regarding mobile data, the market research firm has revealed that while the iPhone is very popular, the award for the most successful platform still belongs to none other than Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Echoing the dot-com boom a decade ago, a wave of Internet companies with lots of buzz but shaky business models went public this year. Here's how they've held up.

Demand Media

Ticker: DMD
IPO date: January 26
IPO price: $17
Now trading at: $8.06
Revenue for first 9 months of 2011: $240 million
Loss for first 9 months of 2011: $15 million