Skip to footer

Zuckerberg admits Facebook stock rollercoaster has been 'painful' to watch

With Facebook stock at an all-time low, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has issued a rallying cry to his employees. 

|
Reuters
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the Allen & Co Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, last month.
  • By Matthew Shaer

These are grim days for Facebook: stock is tumbling, investors are backpedaling, and the personal fortunes of the Facebook founders are shrinking. According to Businessweek, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now worth $10.2 billion, down approximately $10 billion since the social network first went public. Meanwhile, co-founder Chris Hughes is now worth $437 million, down by $400 million at the time of the IPO. 

In a companywide meeting this month, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the stock fluctuations were "painful" to watch, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Mr. Zuckerberg went on to tell employees that the press doesn't know the company's future plans, and if they did, they would have the same faith in Facebook's ability to fulfill its lofty stock-market valuation," adds Shayndi Rice of the Journal. 

Facebook stock hit $19.69 on Thursday – a new low. Following the end of the first so-called lock-out period, this week a select number of early investors were allowed to sell their shares in the company. Facebook employees won't be able to sell until later this year. So what do the next few months hold for Facebook? Well, some analysts aren't exactly overflowing with optimism. 

"This was the most anticipated IPO in many years and it was like an exploding cigar," Barry Ritholtz, head of research firm Fusion IQ, told the Los Angeles Times this week. "Every investor thought they were about to become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and they had this blow up in their face."

Ritholtz added that the high-profile failures of the company could dissuade advertisers from using Facebook as a platform. 

For more on how technology intersects daily life, follow Chris on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Zuckerberg admits Facebook stock rollercoaster has been 'painful' to watch
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0817/Zuckerberg-admits-Facebook-stock-rollercoaster-has-been-painful-to-watch
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe