Facebook went public on the Nasdaq (Ticker: FB) to incredible buzz and enthusiasm on Friday, May 18, 2012. The company priced at $36, raising $16 billion and making Fcebook worth nearly $100 billion.
As of September 11, 2012 the company’s market capitalization is $41.63 billion having lost more than $50 billion (50%+) since its debut less than 120 days ago.
I’m blogging here from Mark Zuckerberg’s first public appearance since the IPO – TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. Ironically, one of my start-ups (Pathmapp) is scheduled to go on stage shortly after Zuck is done.
Here are some of the questions that people have on their mind….and I’ll be back once Zuck takes the stage to LIVE blog his speech.
What explains the dramatic loss of confidence in FB post IPO? Quiet period – feels that it hasn’t entirely been fair since they’ve been unfairly judged without being able to speak. Zuck said “Mobile is incredibly strong for Facebook on many fronts.” He said the growth is amazing, time on site is strong, and he believes over time they’ll make more money from mobile than Web.”
What’s is FB’s mobile monetization strategy? Zuck – “I’m really optimistic about mobile.” It’s much more like TV than the desktop is. “Facebook is seeing mobile ads performing better than desktop ads.”
FB recently rolled out a sponsored search product. How is that going?
How is the Instagram integration going? Did FB pay too much? Amazing. Over 100,000,000 users. We want to help Instagram grow to hundreds of millions of users.
What’s new at Facebook? The idea of search is intriguing. Facebook is getting around 1 billion search queries a day.
What are some of Facebook’s biggest missteps? Zuck “we bet wrong on HTML 5 two years ago.” IOS app is going well and Android app is coming soon.
Is Zuck concerned about lock-ups ending and the liquidity that is likely to enter the market? Is Zuck concerns about employee turnover now that the company has IPO’ed and the stock is performing poorly? Zuck says it’s not easy – this is a difficult time for his staff, but it’s not like Facebook has always been a celebrated company (i.e. privacy). He said it’s time for employees to “double down” with Facebook.
If Zuck answers any of the above Q’s I’ll be sure to provide his response. 🙂
BTW – The media here is crazy. I’m seen a few US Presidents speak and this is crazy.