Facebook bets on mobile future

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Facebook Inc rose in late trading last week after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said he's addressing the missteps that have made it hard to reap the benefits of mobile advertising.

"Now we are a mobile company," Zuckerberg said in an on-stage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco on Sept 12, his first since Facebook's initial public offering. "Over the next three to five years I think the biggest question that is on everyone's minds, that will determine our performance over that period, is really how well we do with mobile."

Shares in Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, climbed as much as 4.8 percent as the remarks allayed concerns over the company's ability to generate sales from users who are increasingly socializing over handheld devices. The stock had plunged 49 percent since the May 17 IPO amid signs of slowing growth and executives' silence over plans to turn the tide.

"He struck an upbeat tone," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co in San Francisco. "Clearly, from his words, they are making progress in mobile."

Zuckerberg, who appeared at ease while trading laughs with his interviewer, for the first time elaborated on technical struggles that have impeded Facebook from creating a user- and advertiser-friendly mobile application. The company spent too long trying to build mobile products using a programming language known as HTML5, Zuckerberg said.

"The biggest mistake we've made as a company is betting too much on HTML5," he said.

Facebook is lessening its reliance on the tools and it has built an application better tailored for Apple Inc's mobile software, Zuckerberg said. It's also working on an application for Google Inc's Android system. New features will be available to the mobile service in the coming weeks and months, he said.

Based on the amount of time users spend on mobile, the company should make "a lot more money" via wireless devices than through desktops, Zuckerberg said. Mobile users also tend to be more interactive than desktop users, he said.

The stock extended its after-hours climb after Zuckerberg said Facebook is taking steps to strengthen search capabilities. The company is fielding about a billion search queries a day.

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About the broadcaster:

Rosie Tuck is a copy editor at the China Daily website. She was born in New Zealand and graduated from Auckland University of Technology with a Bachelor of Communications studies majoring in journalism and television. In New Zealand she was working as a junior reporter for the New Zealand state broadcaster TVNZ. She is in Beijing on a 2012 Pacific Media Centre international internship with the AUT/China Daily Exchange Programme, in partnership with the Asia New Zealand Foundation. She is working as a journalist in the English news department at the China Daily website.