Inside Facebook

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Zuckerberg’s first interview post-IPO, “It’s not about fun anymore, but mission”. Posted: 11 Sep 2012 07:13 PM PDT Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his first interview since the company's IPO at TechCrunch Disrupt SF event today. In addition to talking about the company’s mobile development, the Facebook co-founder spoke on a number of topics varying from the disappointing IPO performance, the potential of Facebook search and what the future has in store for the social network. IPO Going public at $38 a share in May 2012, Zuckerberg was candid in calling the stock's performance, "disappointing". He ensured that they do care about shareholders and are committed to the mission of making the world more open and connected . He continued by stating, "We are going do things to build value over the long term". He also shared that the poor stock price is not exactly "helping" the morale of the company. However, he feels that as long they are building things they are proud of, it helps to motivate the team as well as helps with recruiting. He said, "I think it's a great time for people to join. And I think it's a great time to double down". Something that he emphasized was the fact that the IPO is no exception to the fact that Facebook as a company has not been without controversy. He remained positive about the IPO’s potential, suggesting the low stock as simply a speed bump."The folks at Facebook are used to the press saying good things about us and bad things about us. We have a good compass". Search Zuckerberg said that Facebook search receives over 1 billion queries a day, "without even trying". He shared that he is very intrigued with what the company can do with search and went on to explain how it is different from other search engines. He says that he thinks that internet search is evolving from finding key words to being used to answer specific questions. He believes that Facebook is in a unique position when it comes to answering some of these questions. For example, maybe in the future, you can search for what sushi restaurants your friends have eaten at in the last six months and which ones they liked. He says that Facebook offers a much more personal way to search as it can utilize preexisting social context in a way that current search engines cannot. He added, “At some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on it.” Platform / Open Graph Zuckerberg shared that over 265 million people are playing games on Facebook so that canvas is still a very relevant space for the Facebook Platform. He said that although Zynga is facing trouble, this could be the result of other social gaming developers like King.com and Kixeye finding success. However, he said he is spending most of his time with Open Graph. He went on to say that apps that are using the Open Graph to bring information into Facebook to give people social context. He described the music application Spotify as "killing it". He went on to mention other apps Airbnb and Nike+ as doing really interesting things with the Open Graph. Future When asked if he is still having fun, Zuckerberg response was a yes, but that it wasn't really about fun anymore. He shared, "Yeah, but it really isn't about fun anymore; it's about mission." He and Facebook are focused on building good things and actually prefers to be underestimated rather than overestimated. He emphasized that he wishes to fulfill the mission of leaving a legacy of making the world more connected and providing people the opportunity to share more things with their friends.

Zuckerberg says mobile is good for Facebook, shuts down phone rumors and talks about Instagram acquisition Posted: 11 Sep 2012 05:18 PM PDT In his first interview since the IPO, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt that mobile is “good” for the social network. He addressed mobile advertising and app performance issues, dispelled rumors of a Facebook phone and shed light on the Instagram acquisition. "Over the next three to five years, the biggest question that's on everyone's mind, and that's really going to determine how we do, is really going to be how well we do with mobile," he said. Until six months ago the company did not run a single ad on mobile, and investors and tech pundits have questioned whether Facebook’s business can thrive as mobile adoption grows. Zuckerberg looked to address the outstanding potential of mobile ads as a source of revenue. "We think we're going to make more money on mobile ads," he said. "We've had right-hand-column ads and it's been great, a multi-billion-dollar business. But on mobile, we can't do that. It's clearly going to have to be different." He added that more users were using Facebook on mobile and mobile users were likely to be daily active users. When asked about mobile being a strength or weakness for Facebook, he was candid in admitting that the company’s biggest mistake was focusing too much on HTML5 instead of native applications. It turned out that HTML5 performance couldn’t compare to more native apps, and users grew frustrated with the slowness the iOS app in particular. "We burned two years,” he said. “It may turn out it was the biggest strategic mistake we made." Facebook updated its iOS application to be significantly faster last month. The new native app is regarded as a large improvement to the prior iteration. Zuckerberg said that more than twice as many stories are being consumed in the mobile News Feed since the update. He also hinted that more product and feature changes would be coming to the app soon, as the most recent update was solely focused on speed. Zuckerberg confirmed that the company is working on its Android apps as well, but he didn’t offer a timeframe. "It'll be ready when it's ready," he said. Zuckerberg said that previously there was a core team producing the company's mobile code, but now several teams contribute to mobile products. This is part of Facebook’s goal to be a “mobile company.” However, Zuckerberg shot down the idea of a Facebook phone once again, claiming it "doesn't move the move the needle for us. We want to build a system that's deeply integrated into every platform people use." The CEO also revealed some background on the Instagram acquisition. He said the companies began developing a relationship because of Instagram’s Open Graph integration. As they came up with more features and things they’d like to work together on, Zuckerberg began to think it might be more strategic for the companies to come together as one. He iterated today, though, that Instagram will continue to operate as a standalone app under its existing brand. “We think Instagram is amazing and we want to help it grow to hundreds of millions of users,” he said.

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