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Because of the market perception of Facebook. People have been speculating about how much Facebook works and how they plan on making money in the future. If majority shareholders sell their shares as soon as they can, the share price goes down and everyone's nightmare comes true.

They could've maybe waited a little, for the sake of perception.

Responsibility to the shareholders, or is that passe these days?

But Mark is the majority shareholder...

In the short term it might hurt their stock, but the long term solution is to deliver results. If they truly are focused on the long term like they say, this is just a blip like any other in the market.

Keep in mind that the 'long term' is now ruthlessly reevaluated on a quarterly basis now that they are public. The street is notoriously callous to lofty goals such as long term innovation if it doesn't result in consistent quarterly beats.

Oh absolutely. My point is that if they do deliver results, no one will care about insider selling during the IPO.