Is Mark Zuckerberg in over his hoodie as Facebook CEO?

It is true a new CEO could potentially improve things, but it shouldn't be taken for granted. Disclosure, I'm generally a Facebook skeptic, but I don't think it can be denied that bringing in another CEO who focuses on money, money, money could end up crashing Facebook ten times faster than Zuckerburg could. There are a whole lot of very appealing money-making answers that boil down to eating the seed corn, at wildly varying levels of subtlety. (In fact the source of my skepticism is whether there is any way to make money that doesn't fit this description, but who knows?)

I think the fact that FB was over-priced and criminally IPO'd at ridiculous valuations that aren't living up to the hype (in the near run) are more to blame than anything MZ is doing in particular. As has been said, FB is a fantastic 5 billion dollar company. The sooner they painfully get there, the sooner they can start building...

"His behavior is what I would expect of someone his age — the hoodies and everything else," said Chris Whalen, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners in New York.

Those crazy 28-year olds with their hoodies are wrecking society! Has he heard of Google?

Whatever Facebook does, they certainly shouldn't go pandering to ignorant bankers like this guy NYT quoted. Being obsessed with quarterly financials is the reason we had to wait for Apple to make a decent phone. Every other company had to keep rolling out their incrementally polished turds in time for Christmas sales.

I have no interest in judging a public company by its stock price over such a short period of time.

Markets are fickle - on the short term they tend to react to emotion. Give it a few years, though, and we'll have a much more reliable measure of whether Zuck is creating real value.

Zuck should totally step down and hand over the reins to one of the many seasoned executives from Myspace.

Honestly, and sadly, I think this shows just how ready he is. He recognized Facebook was at its peak and sold. That's good business. He's got a ton of money to drive Facebook forward. What's the mismanagement I'm missing?

Dumb article. The underlying assumption here is that a management shift is a panacea but that's far from the case. People forgot to ask how Facebook could effectively monetize, and I think MZ has a much better shot at figuring it out compared to external management.

The markets are fickle... And the suits complaining over sneakers are just plain ridiculous. Think what you may of Zuckerberg, he's ensured continued control of the company, and whoever's complaining should have done their research ahead instead of jumping in and then acting surprised. Research could have started with notorious early business cards reading "I'm the CEO, bitch".

It seems what they mean when they say "improvement" is merely the stock price increasing. As that data-point is set by investors, I don't see why Zuckerberg could be at fault for this. I also don't see how a CEO who goes around projecting his self confidence to worried investors but without a good technical background would be an "improvement" over Zuckerberg, who despite all malaise towards him is a better programmer than most. Just my thoughts.

edit: I was reading the comments of the article and one of them notes that by selling the IPO at 4x of what it should have been priced, Zuck showed that he is a brilliant CEO.

Remember that Zuck is the guy that didn't sell Facebook at a number of junctures, when all his advisors/investors were telling him to sell. He wants to build great tech -- which is at odds with what today's shareholders want -- quick returns.

On second thought, he could pull a Jobs and get pushed out, only to save the company from death and then take it to stratospheric heights decades later.

I do not really care about Facebook. But I love how he actually did not step down in front of these people who believe to rule the world. The way the get angry at his hoodies makes me always laugh.

I can't possibly understand why people thought a $38 IPO wasn't going to implode. It's practically tongue-in-cheek. You're not really buying a piece of the new silicon valley when you do it on the old New York stock market. Suckers.

It's no secret that Mark Zuckerberg has always intended to keep control of the company and that his vision is a long-term one. So, investors got into facebook thinking something else would happen, and overvalued it in the process. But Zuckerberg doesn't really owe them anything other than to continue running the company with his vision (which would certainly pass good faith legal tests if it ever came to that).

What I'm getting at is that Zuckerberg has the ability stay, and he probably wants to stay. We can mock him all we want for what I consider wall street's mistakes, but what's his motivation to care?

This article is why I sometimes prefer blogs to newspapers. Articles whose titles are questions with lead-ins saying "some people say" make them sound like planted snipe pieces and desperate linkbait.

The language probably reflects that the writers in question are representing the newspaper instead of their own opinion, but the wishy-washy nature of the way it is phrased makes the entire argument diffuse to me.

Every banker on Wall Street was in over their suits and ties when the mortgage debacle hit but many still have their jobs. So, quite frankly, who cares what Wall Street thinks. It's largely been taken over by investors looking for quick profits, which is in contrast sometimes to growing a company that's sustainable.

If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer. You’re the product being sold.

This saying applies to management teams/financial markets as well.

His legitimate goal is to improve the fundamentals (which have not declined 50%). To ask him to put on a suit and glad-hand the Street is to expect him to groom greater fools for the speculators who want to fold after just one quarter. Not only should he not waste his time on this type of investor relations (surely there are minions for that), neither should investors pay attention to it.

Facebook's problem is that it hit the market way over valued. It's possible that it could be worth $100bn someday but it isn't right now or within the next 12 months.

Betteridge's, anyone?

Is there any possible situation where Zuck gets pushed out? Or have his controlling shares insulated him from any kind of ouster?

Will people stop referring to share price when talking about company value? Share price isn't comparable over time due to stock splits and buy outs and other shenanigans. Please refer to market capitalization instead.

Quick, cut out the tech guy who made this possible, get the suits in here post-haste we've got to MARKET.