Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) CEO and wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg created a lot of chatter at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco Tuesday, as he not only made an appearance, but grabbed a microphone and addressed a group in a question-and-answer session revolving around – yep, his company, and his growth as the chief executive of a multi-billion-dollar publicly traded company.
Coming across as pretty candid, modest but optimistic, Zuckerberg admitted some mistakes in the early days of running Facebook Inc. – prior to the May IPO – which included the decision to use a programming language that delayed the development progress of applications for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android phones. He says his company is getting caught up in the mobile area, and is “halfway” through a period where it is looking to “retool” itself as a company, and while he acknowledged disappointment in the low stock price, he maintained optimism that the market will soon appreciate the potential that Facebook Inc. has in mobile and in search – something that had been mentioned much.
However, Zuckerberg did say that he had a team working on ways to develop a search platform – perhaps as a direct competitor to Google Inc., which in itself has been trying to compete with Facebook with its Google+ social network. In regards to developing a search concept, Zuckerberg said, “Facebook is uniquely positioned to answer a lot of questions people have … We have a team working on search.”
In addition to search, Zuckerberg maintained that Facebook Inc. is committing a lot of resources to its smartphone application for mobile, but he also put down some rumors that the company’s struggles in mobile would mean that Facebook Inc. was going to develop its own smartphone. “[That would be] clearly the wrong strategy for us,” he said.
As he spoke in the early afternoon in California, Facebook Inc. shares rose about 3 percent on the day, and moved another 3 percent after hours, at one point passing $20 a share. It ended the trading day at $19.43, a 3.3-percent jump. Based on the information that came out of the Q-and-A session, investors seemed to be calmed down, which is good news for people like hedge-fund manager George Soros of Soros Fund Management.
