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Mark Zuckerberg has called Facebook's stock market debut disappointing but said the company was set to bounce back. "Some days are hard, some days kick ass," the firm's billionaire co-founder told an audience at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco in his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering in May.
Mark Zuckerberg has called Facebook's stock market debut disappointing but said the company was set to bounce back. "Some days are hard, some days kick ass," the firm's billionaire co-founder told an audience at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco in his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering in May.
Zuckerberg has come under intense criticism since the IPO. The company's share price is close to half the $38 (£23.5) price it reached at the launch and the company and its advisers are being sued by angry investors.
Zuckerberg has come under intense criticism since the IPO. The company's share price is close to half the $38 (£23.5) price it reached at the launch and the company and its advisers are being sued by angry investors.
The price collapsed due to fears that the company was not prepared for the dramatic shift to mobile devices, an area in which the company has struggled to make money. But after Zuckerberg offered a robust defence of Facebook's mobile strategy, shares rose 4% in after hours trading.
The price collapsed due to fears that the company was not prepared for the dramatic shift to mobile devices, an area in which the company has struggled to make money. But after Zuckerberg offered a robust defence of Facebook's mobile strategy, shares rose 4% in after hours trading.
"The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing," said Zuckerberg. He said the big question in people's minds was how well the social networking company would do in mobile.
"The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing," said Zuckerberg. He said the big question in people's minds was how well the social networking company would do in mobile.
Zuckerberg said that IPO rules had prevented the company from updating people on Facebook's mobile developments and that "a lot of things have changed".
Zuckerberg said that IPO rules had prevented the company from updating people on Facebook's mobile developments and that "a lot of things have changed".
"I think it's easy for a lot of folks without us being out there talking about what we are doing to fundamentally underestimate how good mobile is for us," he said.
"I think it's easy for a lot of folks without us being out there talking about what we are doing to fundamentally underestimate how good mobile is for us," he said.
Zuckerberg said mobile had more users and those people were spending more time on Facebook. He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run.
Zuckerberg said mobile had more users and those people were spending more time on Facebook. He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run.
Questioned about the atmosphere inside the company, Zuckerberg said the collapsing share price had brought pressures. He has faced criticism about claiming he was more interested in Facebook's "mission" than in making money.
Questioned about the atmosphere inside the company, Zuckerberg said the collapsing share price had brought pressures. He has faced criticism about claiming he was more interested in Facebook's "mission" than in making money.
"It is definitely true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we are doing is the mission, but I also think that from the beginning we have had a healthy understanding that we need to do both," said Zuckerberg. He said "it doesn't help" motivate staff that the share price had fallen so hard but said the future looked brighter.
"It is definitely true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we are doing is the mission, but I also think that from the beginning we have had a healthy understanding that we need to do both," said Zuckerberg. He said "it doesn't help" motivate staff that the share price had fallen so hard but said the future looked brighter.
Zuckerberg ruled out the prospect of Facebook launching its own mobile device. Arch-rival Google has increasingly moved into the hardware business with phones and tablet devices. He said such a move would make no sense for Facebook.
Zuckerberg ruled out the prospect of Facebook launching its own mobile device. Arch-rival Google has increasingly moved into the hardware business with phones and tablet devices. He said such a move would make no sense for Facebook.
But he said he was interested in Google's core product - internet search. He said that the "legacy" in search was about keywords triggering responses from search engines like Google or Bing. Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked".
But he said he was interested in Google's core product - internet search. He said that the "legacy" in search was about keywords triggering responses from search engines like Google or Bing. Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked".
Zuckerberg also defended his $1bn purchase of Instagram, a loss making photo-sharing site that now has over 100m users. "They are this super-talented group of engineers that are building this amazing product," he said. He said Instagram would remain a standalone company.
Zuckerberg also defended his $1bn purchase of Instagram, a loss making photo-sharing site that now has over 100m users. "They are this super-talented group of engineers that are building this amazing product," he said. He said Instagram would remain a standalone company.
"There's no doubt we are a mission driven company," said Zuckerberg. "The thing that gets us excited is making the world more open and connected. But you can't just focus on that."
"There's no doubt we are a mission driven company," said Zuckerberg. "The thing that gets us excited is making the world more open and connected. But you can't just focus on that."
Comments
74 comments, displaying first
12 September 2012 12:01AM
"I don't see how that is positive news for investors who are already majorly underwater."
"...how can smaller screen real estate, with smaller text, and a platform which is much poorer for purchasing (on a phone compared to a regular pc) lead to dramtically higher earnings? "
Comments excerpted from ZH.
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12 September 2012 12:03AM
Mark Zuckerberg calls Facebook's stock market debut 'disappointing'
Gee Mark, you think?
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12 September 2012 12:08AM
"Making the world more open" - this from the guy who created a walled city within the internet, a zone unto itself. Bullshit.
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12 September 2012 12:12AM
Does it make me a cynical a**h**e to be highly amused with all this? Three cheers for the real and tangible world filled with real physical things!
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12 September 2012 12:16AM
All the Wall Street investors made their money and then sold the depleting shares off to clueless people who wanted shares 'because it's Facebook'. The site peaked in early 2010 and everybody knew that, else why cash in before the crash?
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12 September 2012 12:17AM
I can understand why people are on FB but there's NO WAY anyone is getting me on it, and I am even annoyed that there are photos of me on it.
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12 September 2012 12:22AM
"He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run".
Off those users.
Off.
*tsk*
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12 September 2012 12:40AM
Its all a scam - get people to give up their information for free, aggregate it and make lots of money,probably not, especially if users finally see the light. Appropriate comeuppance for the Zuck though shame so many others lost money but that's the price of ignorance and greed
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12 September 2012 12:56AM
muppet, the stock was over priced and all the greedy buggers who lept on board to make a quick killing and walk away got just what they deserved. Sorry folks life sucks!!!
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12 September 2012 1:00AM
That IPO made him a billionaire.. and then the share prices "unexpectedly" tanked the next day leaving millions of investors out of pocket. I'm not a detective or anything, but that looks like robbery on a grand scale.
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12 September 2012 1:10AM
chuffa: capitalism 101.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine who works in an American academic library has been on slow simmer for years because he's forced by his superiors to maintain a Facebook page for his library, and has to plead for folks to "like" his library page in order to keep his bosses off his back. Because that's how libraries prove they're relevant, don't you know.
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12 September 2012 1:18AM
So when average 80 year olds die out and kids become teenagers you think no growth in fb.
I hate McD's but still recognise it is massively successful, lefties seem engrossed in personal taste.
Did your grandad poo poo the car, naw nought wrong with horse.........................................
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12 September 2012 1:21AM
What is Facebooks "mission statement" exactly? Become the worlds no.1 resource of mindless, trivial insights into people's fairly mundane lives?
And asking google what restaurants our friends have liked..I find the whole concept just depressing. There's no escaping the feeling he's a bit of a socially awkward dork struggling to work out how to crack a social world he doesn't really understand
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12 September 2012 1:21AM
LOL
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12 September 2012 1:29AM
Facebook's mission is to know more about each user, than that user does themselves, by data-mining and pattern recgonising (e.g. Facial recognition on photos cross referenced with dates, times, frequencies). Then selling that data to advertisers and other third parties who wish to pay for it.
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12 September 2012 1:30AM
I've now, at last, managed to train Gmail that any mail from Facebook is spam. So I no longer see it. (I still get begging messages via/from something called LinkedIn.)
How amazing and depressing it was to see my acquaintances (or "friends" as they liked to think of themselves) happily feeding somebody else's email address (mine) to a third party.
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12 September 2012 1:33AM
Stock goes down as well as up?? WTF??
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12 September 2012 1:45AM
But he said he was interested in Google's core product - internet search. He said that the "legacy" in search was about keywords triggering responses from search engines like Google or Bing. Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked".
Cripes! They get billion dollar valuations and are supposed to be the 21st century zeitgeist and that's the best Zuckerberg has to offer us? My friend's sushi recommendations? Both Facebook's 'mission' and moneymaking potential (if it ever existed) is definitely going down the U-bend.
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12 September 2012 1:46AM
Facebook's so last year...lol
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12 September 2012 2:28AM
"I don't see how that is positive news for investors who are already majorly underwater."
But why is that the fault of Facebook ? anyone with more than 2 synapses, and not 'drugged' by greed could see it was way over priced. Those people excercised their free choice to make a stupid purchase.
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12 September 2012 2:28AM
He and his colleagues received twice what Facebook is worth, according to its present valuation by the market system that aggregates the wisdom of many experts (or so the theory goes - that same system gave AAA ratings to sub-prime derivatives in the process and inflates the Facebook share price by 4% on the strength of a teaser in an interview).
Perhaps the word he needs is "embarrassing" rather than "disappointing".
Or is he disappointed at the value of his retained stock?
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12 September 2012 2:33AM
i'm more than happy for advertisers to know where i've been on holiday this year & what my favorite film is in exchange for facebook. Its a great tool.
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12 September 2012 3:19AM
Tis only the tip of the Suckerberg.
Sorry, had to say it. I´ll get my coat
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12 September 2012 3:22AM
So what now?
Back to MySpace?
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12 September 2012 3:35AM
Mark Zuckerberg must be an impressive person. Anyone partly or wholly able to conceive of a website that is rapidly approaching the 1 billion user mark has to be.
Your talking about a feat virtually every other web on the entire internet is nowhere near these sorts of figures.
But there is a problem here. Technically Facebook is pretty impressive. But it doesn't appear to be evolving from the initial idea. And Zuckerberg is sounding more and more like a bloke who's becoming more and more detached from the daily realities of his users. It's like the Wall Street sharks have walled up his life, and now intend to devour both him and what was once a rather exciting business and internet platform.
Was going to say customers, but his customers are the advertising companies who spend billions advertising on Facebook. Customer also implies that you pay for something and you get something back in return.
Facebook users offer up all their data and what do they get back? Well to listen to Zuckerberg it appears he believes what users should get back is the privilege of giving up even more data down the road, and beyond that even more data and more and more, just so he and his shareholders can make neverending bucks, and if the profits aren't big enough, he turns to his users for even MORE data.
Does he honestly think a business plan where he expects hundreds of millions of people to log into his website handing over personal data about their activities, for no slice of the cake, and for hours a day to suit his actual customers the advertisers is a long term business plan?
He's crept into the zone now judging from his own comments where he believes it's about what users can do for Facebook and not what Facebook can do for it's users. This is a path that can only lead to doom.
This is ultimately why the IPO failed. What does Facebook actually have to offer your life?
10 years ago maybe longer, internet seemed like the ultimate solution to mankind's problems. On paper it is. All the worlds knowledge pooled and accessible by everyone connected freely.
But in Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all the other big names it's turning out the internet is producing monolithic businesses efficiently channeling money further up the capitalist pyramid than ever before, whilst offering their 'users' and customers very little in return other than the hype of being associated with these businesses.
The little man isn't doing any better than he was when they didn't exist. If anything things are even worse.
Very strange, and rather unexpected. We're in a massive Western recession and none of these businesses appear to have anything to offer whatsoever other than to demand ever more from us.
I can see the day coming when those who've been smart enough not to have themselves digitalised on facebook, and thus pigeon-holed indefinitely online, will have an advantage over those that have.
I've still yet to see offering these data harvesting businesses genuinely benefits the user long term.
People say slot machines are wrong, they say bookies are wrong, but you got people online handing over their hard earned money to buy 'digital gifts', 'digital messages', digital gifts and 'powers'' in online games etc. Honestly didn't know any of this was true til I saw a documentary about it. And we're not talking pennies people. We're talking hard sterling and dollars.
Technically speaking it would actually benefit those people to simply put twenty pound notes in envelopes and send the money to Zuckerberg directly. Least with the time saved they could earn a few more quid or spend a bit more time in the real world.
And it gets better, it's both legal and socially accepted that the worlds biggest search engine charges people or 'words', lol. You can buy 'words' on this search engine, 'words' that offer zero guarantee of a sale for your burgeoning enterprise whatsoever. And should your enterprise grow to a critical size, one of these businesses will simply start offering the same service themselves and use their massive user databases to bury you out of sight.
Be funny if it wasn't all so utterly tragic. Still they offer bright colors, and their spokes PR people always look young, trendy and caring.
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12 September 2012 4:54AM
Zuckerberg must be especially disappointed that he succumbed to external pressure to raise the issue price to $38 and also to over-dilute the issue with too many shares, instead of going by the company's own instinctive feeling to price the shares at $29. The objective should have been to keep demand much higher than supply in order to reward initial investors, rather than to squeeze out every last buck from it and leave no room for price appreciation. The issue was made on the basis of abstract numbers without taking human psychology into consideration.
A pricing and volume strategy that benefited greedy financial institutions was adopted; and those institutions also collected huge fees for coming up with this disaster. But Zuckerberg's biggest mistake was that he did not prepare in advance some clear business plans to show investors how exactly Facebook expected to make enough money to reward them. This IPO should not have been made without such clear plans in hand. The issue was made with the attitude of, "Okay, we're Facebook, and we're issuing shares." And some investors went, "Oh-kay, Facebook shares! Of course I must buy them. After all, it's Facebook, right?"
It should have occurred to Facebook that sooner or later the investors would need to come back down to Earth and ask, "okay, so how exactly are you going to be making money by using our money?"
Here, one could point out that smart investors would have asked this obvious question even before plonking down their money. Well,...
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12 September 2012 5:05AM
You would have to be somewhat sympathetic for someone whose idea of reality is completely and utterly fucked, but with a face like that it is perhaps not so surprising. The least he could do is get a face transplant, as believe me there are better looking corpses.
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12 September 2012 5:08AM
Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked".
Shame on those people who thought that Facebook couldn't evolve.
Their shareholders will sleep soundly in their beds tonight.
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12 September 2012 5:14AM
What - you mean people still use Facebook? Thought we were all on the Guardian now and twittering with Hadley Freeman.
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12 September 2012 5:16AM
Still they offer bright colors, and their spokes PR people always look young, trendy and caring.
You obviously have not seen their ad sales dept.
Scary.
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12 September 2012 5:25AM
Gets worse upon second reading;
"I think it's easy for a lot of folks without us being out there talking about what we are doing to fundamentally underestimate how good mobile is for us,"
What should have been said here is 'how good we are for mobile'.
"It is definitely true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we are doing is the mission, but I also think that from the beginning we have had a healthy understanding that we need to do both,"
Hot air.
"what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked"
I'm no business grad but i'm pretty sure when speaking to your customers or in this case users, you try and find the most common ground and that isn't Sushi restaurants in the biggest recession in decades.
But it gets worse. Is he suggesting he wants friends to stop talking to each other directly and instead upload all thoughts and activities to Facebook, such that you ask Facebook what your mates are up to and not them directly? Is the idea here now to privatize 'friendship'?
He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run
This isn't offered as a direct quote so gonna assume he didn't actually phrase this one this way. But if he did, he's finished. Only a matter of time. Someone that far gone cannot be retrieved imho. This is heading towards Facebook = AOL 2.0 territory.
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12 September 2012 6:12AM
He looks to me like a prime target for some nasty manipulators.
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12 September 2012 6:39AM
So when average 80 year olds die out and kids become teenagers you think no growth in fb.
Obviously a new generation of young people will have new enthusiasms, they aren't going to cling to the fashions of the previous generation. The bands that are popular now will seem old fashioned one day. Facebook will be old hat soon(ish).
lefties seem engrossed in personal taste
It's not a question of personally liking or disliking a company's product. Facebook was sold as its value peaked, to make as much money as possible. It's basic business strategy. I am more interested in why 'righties' seem oblivious to the fundamental features of the market they support. It's like it's radical lefty to notice and speak about how stocks and shares work.
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12 September 2012 6:49AM
It's this charming attitude:
He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run.
That may be at the heart of things.
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12 September 2012 6:50AM
Facebook's mission is to know more about each user, than that user does themselves...... Then selling that data to advertisers and other third parties who wish to pay for it.
In the past few days when I've logged on to Facebook I've been presented with a list recommending "People You May Know" as friends. Topping this list on different visits have been Grace Slick, Sandie Shaw, Marie Helvin, Sian Lloyd and Jerry Dammers.
There's either a alternate "me" out there having a whale of a time or Facebook are just rubbish at the whole data thingy.
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12 September 2012 7:01AM
I've now, at last, managed to train Gmail that any mail from Facebook is spam. So I no longer see it
And how long did it take you to crack gmail's incredibly simple filtering system? A year? Five? If I were you, I wouldn't be boasting about that...
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12 September 2012 7:10AM
Yes. That's why, when it comes to free services You (as in the user) are the product. All free international services have the same business model.
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12 September 2012 7:14AM
Internet services. Nio international services. Bloody iPad spell checker!
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12 September 2012 7:49AM
I don't really understand how fb went public as a social media network whilst not really having plan for making money out of mobile users. Smoke and mirrors.....
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12 September 2012 7:49AM
Anything that encourages youngsters to share their most inane details to all and sundry in lieu of communicating with their parents and family is bound to go Kaput.
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12 September 2012 7:54AM
Disappointing? Depends whether you were buying or selling.
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12 September 2012 8:00AM
He said the big question in people's minds was how well the social networking company would do in mobile.
Ohhhh, wait I thought the dogma the media was that everyone was checking their fb page every 5 minutes on their phones anyway - what happened?
Could it be instead that the social media model is broken a PoS.
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12 September 2012 8:04AM
Does it make me a cynical a**h**e to be highly amused with all this? Three cheers for the real and tangible world filled with real physical things!
Bestofthebested likes this comment. 48 people like this comment
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12 September 2012 8:04AM
No mention at all of the cover-up on disasterous ad revenues days before the IPO launch - that is the main bugbear of investors. Biggest IPO fraud in history when you look at the volumes.
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12 September 2012 8:36AM
Lol you lot absorb yourselves in personal belief. You don't like Tesco so they are doomed. They sell to a huge chunk of the population- ignored. Facebook is the de facto social network globally, watch the youth on their handsets all day. You don't need to make heavy metal objects to create wealth. Open your minds. Now compare multi-decade survivor ITV with a media company that draws fees for adverts, with another that has 500 million active viewers. The latter has the forward ability to advertise target markets to the very suburb you are in. At half price fb is a buy
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12 September 2012 8:41AM
How anyone could buy shares from someone has shifty and slimy as he was in this interview is beyond me. I see in the meantime he's given up wearing his Illuminati hood.
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12 September 2012 8:48AM
@name1
You go girlfriend! So strong of you standing up to 'the man'.
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12 September 2012 8:48AM
hmm
disappointing? for who?
the muggins who bough the shares, yes
but the lawyers and accountants and mr Z himself? awesome piece of of modern day snake oil sales
Link to this comment:
12 September 2012 8:51AM
Whoever thought Facebook would be a sound platform for vast revenue streams deserves all the financial spankings coming their way. Sucker-burg only took Facebook public because he wanted to cash in before it all went tits-up. At the end of the day he was a nerd who got lucky. How that made him a financial whizz-kid in some people's eyes is just a complete mystery to me.
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12 September 2012 9:00AM
That may be at the heart of things
As somebody or other once said "I stopped using Facebook when the realisation dawned that I was the product, rather than the consumer"
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Social networking site's co-founder has given his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering
Mark Zuckerberg has called Facebook's stock market debut disappointing but said the company was set to bounce back. "Some days are hard, some days kick ass," the firm's billionaire co-founder told an audience at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco in his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering in May.
Zuckerberg has come under intense criticism since the IPO. The company's share price is close to half the $38 (£23.5) price it reached at the launch and the company and its advisers are being sued by angry investors.
The price collapsed due to fears that the company was not prepared for the dramatic shift to mobile devices, an area in which the company has struggled to make money. But after Zuckerberg offered a robust defence of Facebook's mobile strategy, shares rose 4% in after hours trading.
"The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing," said Zuckerberg. He said the big question in people's minds was how well the social networking company would do in mobile.
Zuckerberg said that IPO rules had prevented the company from updating people on Facebook's mobile developments and that "a lot of things have changed".
"I think it's easy for a lot of folks without us being out there talking about what we are doing to fundamentally underestimate how good mobile is for us," he said.
Zuckerberg said mobile had more users and those people were spending more time on Facebook. He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run.
Questioned about the atmosphere inside the company, Zuckerberg said the collapsing share price had brought pressures. He has faced criticism about claiming he was more interested in Facebook's "mission" than in making money.
"It is definitely true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we are doing is the mission, but I also think that from the beginning we have had a healthy understanding that we need to do both," said Zuckerberg. He said "it doesn't help" motivate staff that the share price had fallen so hard but said the future looked brighter.
Zuckerberg ruled out the prospect of Facebook launching its own mobile device. Arch-rival Google has increasingly moved into the hardware business with phones and tablet devices. He said such a move would make no sense for Facebook.
But he said he was interested in Google's core product - internet search. He said that the "legacy" in search was about keywords triggering responses from search engines like Google or Bing. Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked".
Zuckerberg also defended his $1bn purchase of Instagram, a loss making photo-sharing site that now has over 100m users. "They are this super-talented group of engineers that are building this amazing product," he said. He said Instagram would remain a standalone company.
"There's no doubt we are a mission driven company," said Zuckerberg. "The thing that gets us excited is making the world more open and connected. But you can't just focus on that."
