By Jessica Hopper and Tim Uehlinger
Rock Center
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that his company has reached an unprecedented milestone: one billion users.
In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Zuckerberg said the 8-year-old company added 200 million new users in the last year and called having a billion users across the world “an amazing honor.”
“To be able to come into work every day and build things that help a billion people stay connected with the people they care about every month, that’s just unbelievable,” Zuckerberg said in an interview airing Thursday morning on Today and on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams at 10pm/9c.
Despite the excitement of crossing the billion mark, Zuckerberg acknowledged the company’s leadership and its staff have been in a “tough cycle” in the months since the company’s initial public offering in May.
Valued at $100 billion when it went public, Facebook is now worth nearly half that. The social network has faced new scrutiny from its users and investors over how it plans to make money from those billion users, especially the ones who access Facebook through mobile devices.
“Things go in cycles. We’re obviously in a tough cycle now and that doesn’t help morale, but at the same time, you know, people here are focused on the things that they’re building,” said Zuckerberg of his staff. “I mean, you get to build things here that touch a billion people, which is just not something that you can say at almost anywhere else, so I think that’s really the thing that motivates people.”
The drop in the company’s value has left many questioning if the 28-year-old tech visionary has the business know-how to be CEO.
“I take this responsibility that I have really seriously and I really think Facebook needs to be focused on building the best experiences for people around the world, right? And we have this philosophy that building the products and services and building the business go hand in hand,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg said that he and his team are focusing on growing the number of people who use Facebook on mobile devices, such as smartphones, a move that he says will make money and respond to the changing needs of their users.
“There’s five billion people in the world who have phones, so we should be able to serve many more people and grow the user base there,” Zuckerberg said.
Of his strategy as CEO, Zuckerberg said that he has taken a few lessons from his late friend, Apple founder Steve Jobs.
“I mean, he was just so focused, right? I mean for him, the user experience was the main thing that mattered, the only thing that mattered and I think that there’s a lot that every company can learn from that,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of that philosophy too, which is we just want to stay maniacally focused on building the best product for those people and I think that’s the path to building a great business and, you know, I think that’s something that Steve understood more than most.”
Zuckerberg is also friends with current Apple CEO Tim Cook who recently gave him a new iPhone 5 as a gift. Zuckerberg, who called the phone a “wonderful device,” wouldn’t say which mobile device he thinks is the best. More people use Facebook on Android than on the iPhone, Zuckerberg said.
“It’s a pretty diverse ecosystem and we spend our time building for all these different things,” he said.
Zuckerberg’s army of builders work on the company’s sprawling campus headquarters in Menlo, Park, Calif. The word “hack” is imprinted on one of the walkways; a homage to the spirit with which Zuckerberg founded the social network. In a building with a red sign saying, “The Hacker Company,” casually clad programmers, engineers and designers toil for the CEO they call 'Mark.'
Zuckerberg, often wearing a uniform of jeans and a gray t-shirt, said he frequently leaves his glass office in the afternoons to roam the offices or walk outdoors to talk to his staff. Every Friday, Zuckerberg holds a weekly Q&A for team members to air their grievances and propose their ideas.
Zuckerberg said he tries to keep his personal life “simple.” When his May wedding to Priscilla Chan was splashed across magazine covers, he said it felt “odd.”
“It’s surprising, but you know, it doesn’t take away from these moments, right? I mean the wedding was an awesome thing,” he said.
Zuckerberg met Chan when both were students at Harvard. He said they secretly planned their wedding to be around the time Chan finished medical school.
“I sent out this email to all our friends, telling them that I was having a surprise party for her from graduating from medical school,” he said. “It was a really small wedding. We had it in our backyard. It was 80 or so people, but it was really nice.”
Of his future, Zuckerberg said his company’s mission has morphed into his life’s mission.
“Our responsibility as a company is just to do the best that we can and build the best products for people,” Zuckerberg said. “If we build the best products, then I think that we can continue leading in this space for a long time.”
Editor's Note: Matt Lauer's exclusive interview with Mark Zuckerberg airs Thursday, Oct. 4 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.
Leave a Comment:
A billion users isn't the same as a billion people using facebook. My guess is 100 million are duplicates, another 100 million are sham or joke accounts, and 50 million belong to "people" with fur and tails.
A bilion users, like addicts for something meaningless...go out an experience real life.
Congratulations to the Facebook team. I am stioll concerned about privacy on the pages. Facebook - Why should folks anywhere in the world be able to access my personal information when I do messages.
Facebook is insane, I have over two hundred 'friends' on it, (I'm hardly ever on it) but am only really friends with about a quarter of that. It's like a pyramid affect, you friend someone because their friends with your friends, and so on and so on. Some of my 'friends' have over 3,000 friends. lmao
I gotta call the b.s. card on this one since I know for a fact there are people out there who have Facebook accounts that are invalid. I've reported more people than I can count on both hands for fake FB accounts, including a family member who has one dedicated to her CAT. And not once has anyone EVER done anything about it. If that's what you want to call one billion customers you might be fooling yourself, but you're not fooling anyone else. Your "user count" is about as worthless as your stock right now Z man.....
The only reason I go on facebook is to use my dozen or so accounts to troll the brainless turds that actually think facebook benefits their lives.
Question If Facebook does an audit on members who repeat repeat repeat themselves no way a billion. But they wouldn't do that now would they? NOPE
It's going down fast now. I am deleting my 750,000 fake acounts. :)
Granted they have this many users but how many has given up their accounts?
As someone who has been working in social media "web 2.0" since it's inception I can say that the industry is rife with smoke and mirrors. It is trying to find it's relevance by reinventing itself and most significantly it's trying to be financially viable. And right now, the equation isn't working because "teeners" don't buy squat. Corporate America is throwing tens of billions into social media advertising but they're preaching to the wrong choir, the wrong demographic. And sooner of later there is going to be a big falling out, another .com to .bomb scenario. And PS, there aren't a billion Facebook "USERS", there are simply a billion sign on's, people, mostly adults who will never use the public platform for anything. In fact, since the "book" is so ubiquitious now, it's almost impossible not to inadvertently sign on through some portal, but USERS? NOT.
They should be more accurate. It's one billion accounts, not users. I know people who have multiple accounts. Are company websites included in this? If so, the number of actual humans is much less. Who cares anyway because I shun facebook at every opportunity. And I won't be "posting to my facebook wall"!!!
I know of at least four accounts that are "active" but the users have expired.
I wonder how many of that billion might be like I was---unable to figure out how to cancel out of the thing. I joined but didn't post anything or whatever it is you do, never had a "wall," etc., and when I started getting all that e-mail I decided never mind. It took me weeks to find the way out/off. I am sure the near-impossibility of deleting your account has something to do with the high participation---people are stuck, can't cancel, so, by default, they remain "users" even if they do not use it.
Also, I agree that while Apple is designed for the buyer, Facebook certainly is not, because there are no buyers. It is free to get on. Which is probably why it is murder to get off! Apple really is what I heard Jobs say once---made for "liberal arts majors." He wasn't kidding about that. It's true, true, true.
You are right being forced to use facebook. I do NOT do anything that requires using Facebook and it should simply be illegal to force it on anyone!
How troubling to this Space Cowboy's minds' eyes, that there is so much fear on this thread, over such a good communication tool connecting people all over the world. Lets just hope that the online Tech tools do not end up as wasted, and harmful s the slime oozing out of our TV sets has. I certainly see the rotten fruits of the TV right here on this thread. But I saw that back in 1994, before the internet was as great as it is now. Though others had seen how 'that trash stuff' had been dividing society for years and had song songs about. To name a few: Hank Williams, Frank Zappa, and The Eagles.
I AM A LARGE APPLE HOLDER FROM YEAR ONE AND NOW FACEBOOK.
When the two team up, I am going on the ride of my life into Gravy-Ville!!
"The social network has faced new scrutiny from its users and investors over how it plans to make money from those billion users, especially the ones who access Facebook through mobile devices."
It's not just that. Facebook has been more and more involved with moral lawsuits, especially in my country (Brazil), where it's legal for transgenders to use their 'social names' instead of the ones at their birth certificate, something that seems to annoy the company so much that it has overlooked legal decisions to obey and it has simply blocked transgender users - even the ones who fought on Justice (and won) their right to keep on with their social names.
Facebook is NOT above the law, as its CEO might think. Ignoring this could bring them seriously down.