Mark Zuckerberg’s new status: liquid.

Trading in shares of social media giant Facebook started at $43, with a whopping 82 million shares trading hands in the first 30 seconds.

In the first few minutes of trading, the stock continued to slide and had fallen below $39 just before noon. Expectations are that as many as 600 million shares will trade hands by the close of markets today at 4 p.m.

The $43 opening price represents a relatively modest 13 percent pop for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, which priced its IPO shares at $38 late yesterday.

Facebook trading kicked off at 11:30 a.m. — about 30 minutes later than the stock was scheduled to launch, causing some anxiety for the Nasdaq exchange where the stock is listed under the ticker “FB.”

Facebook’s bank underwriters priced the stock at the high end of the $34 to $38 target range, hoping for a more subdued pop and better long-term performance.

Skeptics of the tech company question its ability to generate more money from advertising and navigate the transition to mobile devices.

Facebook, started by the 28-year-old Harvard dropout in his college dorm room, raised $16 billion in its IPO , making it the second largest public debut of stock since Visa’s $17.9 billion IPO back on March 2008 .

mdecambre@nypost.com