Today in Social

In his first appearance since Facebook’s IPO, CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed to calm Wall Street and please the digerati with his frankness. He conceded that betting on HTML5 for mobile was the company’s “biggest mistake,” but said Facebook would ultimately make more money on mobile than from the web, even though it had absolutely no plans to build a phone. He also hinted at building out Facebook’s search capabilities, before pulling back a bit. He dropped some interesting data points. HTML5 sounds good: common code across platforms, faster time-to-iterate, and an easier path to delivering a common user experience. But if that experience is lousy, it’s all for naught. On the mobile monetization front, I’ve written that if Facebook wanted some quick hits, it could defer its efforts to re-invent advertising as we know it and just offer up some more advertiser-friendly formats and packaging. But focusing nearly all its efforts – and market education – on true social media marketing for the feed will pay off in mobile in the long run. As for search, a 25-person team isn’t going to beat Google or unseat partner Microsoft.