Under the gun to get some moolah from mobile advertising Facebook’s chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement on 13 July 2012 that his hardest job right now is figuring out how to adapt the world’s largest social network to mobile devices.
Zuckerberg is sure feeling some heat from its nemesis Google as Facebook’s pressing urge to delve deeper into the mobile territory surfaced after the launch of Google drive and Google Chrome app for smart phones on 1July, 2012 with much anticipation and fanfare.
Zuckerberg has said in an interview at the Allen & Co. Media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho that bringing Facebook features to smartphones and handheld gadgets is not a cakewalk as the user experience is so different than on the desktop computers. Meanwhile, he vanquished the tribulations of running a newly public company.
“Things are not much different,” said Zuckerberg, who started Facebook eight years ago from his dorm room at Harvard University. “I’m focused on building product.”
Mobile revenue has been a sore spot for the company for months. According to Gigaom’s Ki Mae Heussner, Twitter has had success with its native mobile advertising (even reporting that mobile revenue outpaces desktop revenue), Facebook has been slower to make money from the 500 million users who access the social network from a phone.
Owing to its slow growth Facebook’s shares have dipped by almost 20 percent since they began trading in May. As per the Bloomberg report the stock fell less than 1 percent to $30.64 at 11:23 a.m. on 14 July 2012 in New York.
Zuckerberg was joined at the Allen & Co. event by other technology and media gurus, including Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, Washington Post Co. chief Don Graham, and venture capitalist and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen.
Even with all the additional scrutiny, Facebook’s IPO hasn’t been the biggest recent transition in Zuckerberg’s life, the 28-year-old said in the interview.