At Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting this morning, one investor had an unusual question for CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“One of the downsides of being successful and rich is you create some resentment from people,” he said. “How do you make yourself warm and fuzzy and loved throughout the world?”
That might seem like a random question from an eccentric. But how the world views Zuckerberg—and how Zuckerberg views the world—matters more than ever for Facebook. That’s because for possibly decades to come, Facebook’s future is Mark Zuckerberg.
At the meeting, Facebook shareholders voted to approve a restructuring of the company’s stock offering that ensures Zuckerberg keeps his majority ownership even if the company issues more stock. That means for the foreseeable future, Zuckerberg is in control.
Responding to the shareholder’s question, Zuckerberg said in order to keep people interested in Facebook, you have to be clear about what you’re trying to do.
Not Going Anywhere
So far, more than 1.65 billion people are opting in every month, which gives shareholders little reason to want anyone else in charge. More than 1 billion people look at Facebook on mobile devices every day, and the company brought in more than $5 billion in revenue just last quarter. In other words, Zuckerberg is not exactly pushing people away.
Thanks to its ability not just to attract a massive audience but to get them to reveal so much about themselves, Facebook has been able to give its customers—that is, advertisers—options that keep them coming back and spending their money. Facebook can insert highly targeted mobile ads into its News Feed. It has aggressively ramped up video, which opens the platform to lucrative video ads. On Instagram, it offers visual ads that make Google’s AdWords look like just so many words. “For the very long run, I believe our monetization will be primarily advertising,” said Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s chief counterpart at the top of Facebook’s corporate hierarchy.
More Facebook
But Zuckerberg appears to know that remaining the undisputed king of mobile means coming up with new things to offer, which is why he’s committed so heavily to messaging in the form of both WhatsApp and Messenger. “It’s not that they compete for mindshare against each other,” Zuckerberg said of the potential for competition between the two. “They represent different philosophies and utilities.” WhatsApp is “more utilitarian,” a tool focused on speed, Zuckerberg said, while he described Messenger as a tool for expression.
Still, Zuckerberg plans to extend messaging on both to become not just a way you communicate with your friends but also businesses. Facebook already has 50 million business pages today. Next he wants people to use Messenger and WhatsApp to get those businesses talking with their customers. “People don’t want to be on the phone for customer support for half an hour at a time,” Zuckerberg said. “If they can just send a message and send a response back, then that’s a good experience.”
All in all, Zuckerberg has built a platform that people want to use, and advertisers want to pay to reach them. And he’s extending that platform to include virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and “connectivity,” or Facebook’s catchall term for the drones, lasers, and free Internet it’s trying to deploy around the world to make sure as many people as possible can get online. “Every 10 or 15 years, big new computing platforms come along, whether that was desktop or web or mobile phones,” he said. “We want to make sure that the next big computing platform is fundamentally social.” Ultimately, Facebook’s biggest investment is building a platform on top of you. And today Facebook shareholders made sure Zuckerberg will be around for a long time to come to lead the way.