Good morning. Welcome and thanks for joining us for Facebook's Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I'm Colin Stretch, General Counsel of Facebook and Secretary of this Annual Meeting, which I now call to order. Let me run through today's agenda. We will first focus on the formal business set forth in the proxy statement.
Mark will then spend a few minutes talking about how Facebook is doing and then we'll have short Q and A session. Before we begin with the formal business, I'd like to remind you to please turn off all mobile devices And I'd like to remind you of the rules of conduct for the Annual Meeting that was provided to you when you entered the meeting, including the rule prohibiting photos and recording of any kind. To conduct an orderly meeting, we ask that participants abide by these tools. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Now let me start by introducing the members of our Board of Directors who are here today.
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, Sue Desmond Hellman and Don Grant. I would also like to introduce a few other folks who are in attendance today. Alex Bender of Ernst and Young LLP, our independent registered public accounting firm is present And also present is Chris Vico, who has been appointed by the Board to act as the Inspector of Election for this meeting and will tabulate the results of the Ms. Vico has executed the oath of Inspector of Election. Turning now to the formal business of the meeting, I will first report on the notice for this meeting.
I have a copy of the notice of the meeting together with a declaration as to the mailing and Statement made available to all of Facebook's stockholders of record determined as of the close of business on March 24, 2014. I have a list of the stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting, which is available for inspection by any stockholder present or by any proxy holder representing a stockholder and which list will be filed with the records of this proceeding. I'm advised by the Inspector of Election that the holders of shares representing at least a majority of the voting power of Facebook shares Entitled to vote are present or represented by proxy here today and a quorum is therefore present. This meeting is therefore authorized to transact business. We have 7 proposals to consider at this meeting, each of which is described in the proxy statement.
First, we will address the election of our directors, each to serve until the next annual meeting or until the earlier of his or her death resignation or removal. 2nd, we will seek the ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as our independent registered public Accounting Firm, for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2014. We also received 5 stockholder proposals that complied with the requirements of our bylaws and SEC rules and are therefore eligible to be voted on at this meeting. The first of these, proposal number 3, requests a change in stockholder voting. Proposal number 4 is a proposal regarding lobbying pictures.
Proposal number 5 is a proposal regarding political contributions. Number 6 relates to Dialpad Obesity and Food Marketing to Youth. And finally, proposal number 7 is a proposal regarding an annual sustainability report. We will discuss the proposals momentarily. First, however, I remind you that the voting today is by proxy and written ballot.
If you have already sent in a proxy and do not intend to change your vote, there is no need for you to cast a ballot today. Your vote will be counted automatically without any further action on your part. Any stockholder present who has not returned to proxy All who wishes to change your vote should cast a vote on the proposals to be considered at this meeting. Does any stockholder wish to cast a ballot today? If you do and if you do not have a ballot, Please raise your hand and our volunteers will bring a ballot to you.
Keep your hand up until you have a ballot in hand. And as we continue to pass out the ballot, It is 11:10 a. M. And the polls are now open. You may vote at any time while the polls are open, including during Question of the proposals on the agenda.
When you are ready to vote, please mark and sign your ballot accordingly. And once you are done, please raise your ballot in the air and our volunteers will come collect them. I will now review the proposals we voted on by the stockholders at this meeting. And then we will take questions after we've heard of all of the proposals including the statements by the proponents of the stockholder proposals. The first item of business is to elect our Board of Directors to serve until the next annual meeting or until the earlier of their death resignation or removal.
The Director nominees are Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, Susan Desmond Hellman Donald Graham Reed Hastings Sheryl Sandberg Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg. The qualifications of each proposed director is set forth in the proxy statement. No other director nominees have been properly submitted for election pursuant to our bylaws or SEC rules. Therefore, no other nominations may be accepted. The The Board of Directors recommends a vote for the election of each of the nominated directors.
The second item of business is to ratify the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, team. The Board of Directors recommends a vote for the ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP. Moving on to the 5 stockholder proposals. These proposals and the company's opposition statements are set forth in the proxy The Board of Directors recommends a vote against each of the stockholder proposals for the reasons set forth in the proxy statement. The applicable proponent of the stockholder proposals will now be permitted to make a statement in support of their respective proposals.
I will call each of the proponents or their representative up 1 by 1 to the microphone in the center aisle. And I would ask That each proponent of a stockholder proposal limit their statement to 3 minutes and please do not include a reading of the proposal itself as the proposal and Applicable stockholder positions have already been presented in the proxy statement. So first with respect to Proposal number 3, Ms. Claire Sierravo representing Mr. James McRitchie and Myra Young will make a Statement.
Good morning. You can hear me great. Proposal 3, give each share an equal vote sponsored by James McRitchie and Myra K. Young of Elk Grove, California. Resolved, shareholders request that our Board take steps to adopt a recapitalization plan as soon as practicable for all outstanding stock to have one vote per share.
This would include all practicable steps including encouragement and negotiation with family shareholders to request that they relinquish for the common good of all shareholders any pre existing rights. This proposal is not intended to unnecessarily limit the Board's judgment and crafting a requested change in accordance with applicable laws and existing contracts. By allowing certain stock to have more voting power than other stock, Our company takes our public shareholder money, but does not let us have an equal voice in our company's management. Without a voice, shareholders cannot hold management accountable. The 2013 version of this proposal at Google won the highest votes ever for Google shareholder proposal, 180,000,000 yes GMI Ratings, an independent investment research firm, said Facebook's complex dual class ownership structure is a major area of concern.
The holders of our company's Class B common stock hold approximately 96% of the voting power with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg personally controlling 55%. GMI said that since the beginning, Facebook's poor governance had been an unmistakable warning sign for investors to take heed. GMI was concerned that a founder and Board member dumped Since May 2012, the total company stock sales for Facebook founding investor and Board member, Peter Thiel had eclipsed 1,000,000,000 Furthermore, top executives resigned in growth since Facebook went public. Facebook's Board consisted of 2 inside directors, 2 large investors and 4 more directors who either had Substantial related party transactions at Facebook or were nominated to our Board by Mr. Zuckerberg himself.
GMI said it's Hard to point to a single director who has the long term interest of our company's independent shareholders as their first priority. GMI said the corporate governance practices of the Facebook Board do not appear to be well aligned with sustainable shareholder interests. While directors are currently elected to 1 year This will revert to 3 year terms should the voting power of the controlling shareholder fall below 35%, effectively offsetting the benefits of 1 year terms. Directors needed only 1 yes vote based on our plurality voting standard further inhibiting the ability of minority public shareholders to influence the election of directors.
Facebook also locked a committee for succession planning in the
nomination of new directors. Also locked a committee for succession planning and the nomination of new directors. Please vote to protect shareholder value. Give each share an equal vote proposal 3. Thank you.
Thank you. Next with respect to proposal number 4, Sister Mary Ellen Lechevsky, representing the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica. Sister, thank you for your attendance.
Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Zuckerberg, fellow Stockholders and members of the Board, my name is Mary Ellen Lechevsky and I'm representing the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica. I hereby move proposal number 4 asking our company to disclose its state and federal lobbying expenditures, Including indirect funding of lobbying through trade associations and support for the American Legislative Exchange Council, Transparency and accountability in corporate spending to influence public policy are in the best interest of Facebook's stockholders.
Lobbying is an important part of Facebook's business strategy. Facebook spent more than 10,200,000 Dollars in 20122013 on federal lobbying and according to the Wall Street Journal hit a record for its own lobbying with $2,800,000 spent for the Q1 of 2014. Our company argues that preparing a Report of its lobbying would be cumbersome to apply, but Facebook is required to report its lobbying And it has this information, so it could easily be provided to share owners in a report. Corporations can easily contribute corporate resources to Trade associations or other organizations that lobby indirectly on their behalf without specific Disclosure or accountability. For example, the Chamber of Commerce has spent more than $1,000,000,000 on lobbying since 98, making it the country's largest lobbying spender.
But Facebook doesn't even disclose its membership, not to mention its trade association payments used for lobbying. So Facebook stockholders have no Way to know if Facebook belongs to the Chamber or how much of its trade association contributions are being used to lobby on its behalf. One organization that Facebook funds as a member is particularly surprising. Facebook supports Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, which has a very partisan and conservative agenda on issues from voter rights to immigration reform. This proposal is asking for disclosure of Facebook's payments to ALEC.
Our request For disclosure is simply asking Facebook to show that its lobbying is being done for the company and stockholders' best interest. Lobbying is stockholders' money that is being spent. Does our company stand behind its spending on lobbying? And if it does, Then why doesn't Facebook disclose its trade association memberships and lobbying? Proxy Advisor ISS supports Facebook's Board and its shareholders need complete disclosure to be able to evaluate the use of corporate assets for lobbying And for any risks this spending can pose, we urge shareholders to vote for this proposal.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sister. With respect to proposal number 5, we will again hear from Ms. Claire Sciervo, now representing Northstar Asset
Management. Good morning again. As introduced, my name is Claire and I do work for Northstar Asset Management in Boston. We are the beneficial owners of over 55,000 shares of Facebook stock. And I'm here to ask your support of Resolution 5.
Book's mission, as we all know, is to give people the power to share and to make the world more open and connected. Because we are succeeding in this mission, our Company is not just in the public eye like most companies, it has become part of the public eye. Our corporate brand and reputation are built upon the premise of sharing And our company knows firsthand the power of issues going viral. In order to protect our brand and shareholder value Within this increasingly transparent world that Facebook has helped to create, we must ensure that our political giving is connected to the company's public policy priority. And so far, our company has failed to do so.
Facebook CEO has stated that the company will support politicians who seek to further open and Free Internet. Yet the Facebook Political Action Committee has contributed to politicians seeking to center the Internet through the stop online piracy and protect IPX. Facebook PAC contributed to 3 sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act as recently as last fall. Facebook has a progressive consumer base, which supports Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights as does Facebook stated company values. Yet Facebook has donated 41% of PAC contributions since its inception to Politicians voting against LGBT rights.
Despite Facebook's public support for the environment, our PAC funds have voted have supported At least 8 senators have voted just last week against moving forward with an energy savings sale. Our PAC funds have supported Climate change deniers such as Senator Ted Cruz, who earlier this year stated on CNN that over the last 15 years there has been no Recorded warming and whose own energy plan includes repealing EPA regulations. Our PAC has also donated 2 years in a row To Senator and potential presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, who 11 days ago on ABC News said that he does not believe human activity is Causing dramatic changes to our climate and that legislation aimed at climate change will destroy our economy. Facebook needs a policy to align our political giving with our brand. If we fail to resolve the disparity between what we stand for In which politicians we attach our brand to, we run the risk of 1 of our 1,000,000,000 active users exposing a hypocrisy for us.
We run the risk of management appearing out of touch and unaware, thereby causing shareholder value to erode. To encourage management to protect our And our shareholder value, we ask you to vote yes for Resolution 5. Thank you so much.
Thank you. With respect to proposal number 6, Sister Susan Vickers representing the Sisters of the Holy Names.
Good morning, Mr. Zuckerberg, members of the Board and shareholders. I'm here today representing the Sisters of the Holy Names and other co filers of proposal number 6. Our organization's commitment to children's welfare Motivated us to file this proposal after our request for dialogue went unanswered. The resolution calls on the Board To formally assess whether the scope, scale and Policy policies are sufficient to prevent material impacts on the company's finances and operations Due to public concerns about childhood obesity, as well as initiatives to eliminate or restrict food marketing to youth.
Obesity in youth, which has lasting health repercussions and vast economic consequences, Remains a grave public health threat. In this context, carrying extensive food marketing to youth as Facebook does Exposes the company to significant regulatory and reputational risks. Food marketing influences It is children's diets and thus has been intensely scrutinized by federal agencies, Congress, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization. The food industry It's spending an increasing proportion of its marketing dollars to advertise to young people on social media. Facebook offers marketers access to an amount of personal data from young users that is unparalleled within the universe of social media platforms, subjecting Facebook to potential additional risk from regulation as well as litigation.
In addition, the company's recent actions seem to exacerbate these risks. In 2013, Facebook announced it was easing its privacy policy for 13 to 17 year olds, Enabling their posts to be visible to anyone on Facebook. Facebook has changed its policies to make clear That simply by having a Facebook account, users allow the company to use their posting and other personal data For advertising. And finally, Facebook has indicated that it is considering opening its platforms to children ages 12 and under. We urge shareholders' support for this proposal and we reiterate our request of the company's
Thank you, Sister. Finally, with respect to proposal number 7, Mr. Patrick Dougherty, representing the Comptroller of the State of New York. Mr. Chairman, Fellow shareholders, my name is Patrick Dougherty and I'm here today on behalf of the New York State Common Retirement Fund to introduce the Fund's resolution calling on Facebook to issue annual sustainability reports examining the company's environmental, social and governance policies and practices.
Environmental, social and governance issues can pose significant risks to U. S. Businesses. And without adequate Disclosure, shareholders and analysts cannot determine whether the company is managing those risks properly. The majority of Fortune 500 and S and P500 companies already recognize the value of comprehensive sustainability reporting by regularly issuing such reports.
We believe that Facebook should join in their number and therefore on behalf of the New York State Common Retirement Fund holders of 313,695 Thank you. We will now provide responses to the stockholder proposals as they have already been set forth in the proxy statement. I will however now open up the floor for questions specifically on the proposals on our agenda. If you have a question again specifically relating to any of the proposals, please line up behind the microphone in the middle of the aisle. We ask again at this point that you restrict your questions to the proposals being voted on in the morning this morning that you Limit your question or statement in support of to 1 minute.
There will be an opportunity to ask general questions about Facebook later after the business portion of the morning. Sir?
Yes. My name is Shelton Ehrlich. I'm a Shareholders since the IPO, thank you for making me money. I'd like to comment As a conservative that I found these proposals to be nonsensical. ALEC was a fine organization.
Nobody objected to it until they suggested that people who vote should prove that they're citizens. The The argument that the world has warmed in the past 15 years is negated by the evidence. If you look at the comparison of the models With the global temperatures, there has been no net increase in the past 15 years. No amount of argument will deny that fact. I'll have some more to say later.
Thank you. Are there any other questions relating to these specific proposals? Sir? Yes. May I direct some questions to the Board of Directors?
Is that proposal 1 or is this not the time to do Yes, if you have a question relating to the Board nominees now would be the right time. Okay. I was I don't know The position of the members of the Board on notifying Facebook users about potential lawsuits and their position on Facebook engaging in litigation to silence critics, maybe engaging in frivolous litigation. And I think that some companies in the Silicon Valley have engaged in lawsuits to silence their critics, such as Varian and some other publicized lawsuits. And I was curious if they had Some kind of general commitment or some kind of guiding principle to urge Facebook to avoid such lawsuits to silence other individuals.
And I'm sorry, but I don't know that the policy for notifying Facebook users about their account being subpoenaed In a civil lawsuit and sometimes in litigation and discovery, Facebook will get a subpoena. And I wanted to know The legal extent to which Facebook was committed to notifying the users about their IP address and their identity being unmasked. Thank you. So the Board's role is set forth in the corporate governance guidelines. It does not extend to making determinations as to the specific questions you raised.
The qualifications for the directors to perform the function set out in the corporate governance guidelines, in particular providing strategic direction to the company are set forth in the proxy statement and we'll be voting on that basis. With respect to your specific question about the company's policy as to notifying users As to when the contents of their account are being requested in connection with law enforcement investigations, those are set forth in our law enforcement guidelines, which you can find publicly available. Okay. We're going to ask each stockholder to address one question so that others may have an opportunity. If you have Any questions about that or other Facebook policies, you're certainly welcome to accept the mic during the general Q and A section, which will follow the formal business of the meeting.
Thank you. Hello. I have a question regarding proposal number 3. The speaker said that by virtue of the Class B of shares and other executives have 10 to 1 voting rights over other shareholders. And by virtue of that, Mark himself has 55 If that's true, then why are we even handing out ballots for people here to vote?
Because basically, Mark can decide what he wants without even Counting our balance. So, Mark, as everyone knows, Mark is our Founder and our CEO and it's been his vision and leadership that has guided the company so far and been a substantial contributor to the company's success. We believe that voting structure enables the company to focus on the long term, which will continue to be a contributing factor in the company's success. With respect to Stockholder voting, it's an important part of the American corporate structure and we intend to Are there any other questions specifically relating to the proposals? So that concludes the discussion of the proposals.
We will now collect any remaining ballots. Again, please raise your hand with your ballot in the air when you've completed your voting Our volunteers will come around to collect them. Any other ballots that need to be collected? Anyone else if you're still completing your ballot, you can raise your hand as well and we'll hold off.
We've got
one, okay. Anyone else? Ma'am, are you is she done? Yes. Okay, almost.
Okay. All votes have been cast on the proposals to be considered at the meeting. And as of 11:35 a. M, the polls are now closed. I will now confer with the Inspector of Election and report on the preliminary results of the voting.
Okay. The vote required to approve proposal 1 is a plurality of the voting power present in person or represented by proxy at this meeting, which means that the 8 nominees receiving the highest number of affirmative votes will be elected to the Board. Based on result As tabulated by the Inspector of Election, each of the 8 nominees on the ballot received the highest number of affirmative votes cast and therefore each of the nominees has been elected to the Board of Directors. The vote required to approve proposals 2 through 7 is the majority of the voting power present in person or represented by proxy with respect to each such proposal. Based on results as tabulated by the Inspector of Election, The proposal to ratify the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP Proposal 2 has been approved by at least the requisite majority of the votes cast and each of the stock Call to Proposals, Proposals 3 through 7 has been rejected by at least the rejected the requisite majority of the votes cast.
There are no other formal Items of business before this meeting, final results will be recorded as stated in the minutes of this meeting and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a Form 8 ks within 4 business days. This concludes the formal part of our meeting and the annual meeting is now adjourned. Now before I ask Mark to come up to the stage to share some thoughts on the company and to engage in a Q and A, I want to remind you that Mark's presentation and the Q and A that will follow may contain forward looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. We caution you to consider the important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements in the presentation and the Q and A to follow. These risk factors are more fully detailed under the caption Risk Factors in our quarterly report on Form 10 Q filed with the SEC on April 26, 2014.
In addition, please note that the date of this annual meeting is May 22, 2014. And any forward looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Mark, over to you. All right.
Thanks to all of you guys for coming out today. This is an important tradition that we have and we think it's really important that we get in Before we jump to that, I want to just give an overview on how I think the last year has This is our last shareholder meeting and give some highlights on what we're focused on and how we think the next few years are So the last year has been a pretty exciting and good one for us overall. If 2012 was about Starting to make this transition to mobile and starting to get our products ready for mobile. 2013 was really the year that Our business became a mobile business. We now have more than 1,000,000,000 people using our products on mobile.
That's 55% of people who use Facebook Every day, use it only on mobile phones. Almost 60% of our revenue in business comes from mobile at this point. So I think it's really fair to say that we've made this So now the majority of our business and the way that people use Facebook is on mobile and that reflects a lot of hard work within the company and we're really proud of that. And I think as shareholders we should all feel good about that. Going forward, we're really excited now that we have our business in a strong place to really focus on building some new mobile first products and experiences.
So the last couple of years have been about getting the way that people use Facebook to work really well on mobile. We think we can focus on some new things that will deliver more value to people over time. This has been also an interesting year of reflection for us. It's been Our 10 year anniversary in terms of running the company, we started in February of 2004. So we just hit our 10 year And we've accomplished a pretty crazy amount in the last 10 years, connecting more than 1,000,000,000 and Quarter people, building a business that we're really proud of that's generating a lot of profits For ourselves and shareholders.
And when we look forward to what the next 10 years have, a lot of this is going to be about Helping people connect and do more in the ways that we've already helped in the last set of years. But we also want to make sure that we Some big audacious goals that we're trying to set forth for how we want to change the world over this period as well. So as a company, we've I really talked about 3 high level themes for the next 10 years, connecting everyone in the world, Understanding the world and kind of everything around there for people and helping to build the knowledge economy for Post. And these three themes, I'll go into it in a little bit of detail and then we'll get to Q and A. Connecting everyone, I think, is actually pretty straightforward, right?
We have We've connected about 1,280,000,000 people so far. There's about 7,000,000,000 people in the world. We have our work cut out for us. We have a lot more to do. And we're going to focus I'm doing that.
There's some new challenges ahead because about 2 thirds of people in the world don't even have access to the Internet. There's a natural feeling on how much we can do just connecting people who have a data connection on their phone or computer. So we're going to keep working on that. But we also have this effort that we call Internet.org, which is about making sure that everyone in the world gets That's through a basic Internet connection. And this is a program that we're investing a lot in and we think it's really good for the world, broadly to get everyone on the Internet and will also over time Good for Facebook as we can grow the number of people who are connecting to us as well.
That's kind of Brett, right, if you're thinking about getting everyone on to We also want to deepen the way that people connect on our service. And for that, we're really focused not just on building the main Facebook service, what we call internally The Big Blue app. But they're building kind of different services and different apps that people can use on their phones for sharing and connecting in different ways. So, you may have used, the Facebook Messenger app. More and more people are using that.
More than 200,000,000 people use this for Kind of daily texting and chatting, that's growing quickly. We also have made a few acquisitions including Instagram, which now has more than 200,000,000 people using it for sharing photos and videos with their community, which is often a different community than people have on Facebook. And we recently announced that we are going to acquire WhatsApp, which has more than 500,000,000 people. I'm using it primarily for SMS, mostly outside of the U. S.
And abroad, but that's growing quickly as well. So those four services in addition to A handful of other ones that we're planning on building will make it so that people can so we're not only going to increase the number of people who are connecting, but also deepen how they connect through our Moving on to the second theme of kind of helping to understand the world. Our hope over the next 5 to 10 years is that on Facebook, people aren't just Using it to share and communicate, but also can help answer real questions and solve problems that they have in the world that you don't typically think of a social network as helping you So whether you need a recommendation for a plumber to come fix your home or you're looking For a recommendation of a hotel to stand when you're on vacation. So a lot of things that it's often difficult to use web Search to find answers for today, what your friends think about different things. It's not indexed by any web search engine today.
But those are things that we think you can build a social network be able to do. And we're pretty early in the journey towards doing that and that's going to be a multi year voyage to get there. But we think over a 5 It's a 10 year period. We can deliver a lot of value for people and ultimately shareholders by doing that. The final theme that I want to talk about And building the knowledge economy.
And what we really mean
by this is we think
that there's this theme in the world where more people are using information to do their jobs on a day to And what we see in our business, which is primarily advertising, is that large companies have a lot of insights about who their customers are and can use that to market effectively and build personalized products and all kinds of different things. And what we've found is that a large part of our business is not only serving large advertisers and customers, Also a lot of small businesses, right? And we're really proud of the millions and millions of small businesses who use Facebook to be able to sell their product to people and grow and learn about their customers as well. And a big part of our goal is to make it so that every small business owner has the same tools and insights About the people that they serve as large companies do. We think that the world will be a better and more democratic and stronger economic place if all small So that's a big theme of what we're focused on as well.
Now there's one more thing that I wanted to talk Before we go to Q and A, besides these 3 big themes for the next 10 years of connecting everyone, understanding the world and building the knowledge economy. And that's what kind of culture I think we need to build at Facebook in order to achieve these goals over the next 10 years. So we've talked a lot about This hacker culture that we have at Facebook. What we mean by that is that we're hacking into things.
We think that's a different definition
of hacking that we strongly do not condone. But what we mean when we say hacking is this MIT definition, which is people kind of messing around experimenting as a way of building things, I'm trying something, seeing what works, trying something else, tinkering a lot until you come up with something that serves people really well. And that's been a really good approach for us over time. And it's helped us move really quickly and build a lot of different things. But what we found is our culture is very internally focused.
When we talk about our hacker In our culture of building, it's all about how we do things and it's not about the people we serve. And we have a stated goal inside our company, Which is to build a culture of loving the people we serve, all the more than 1,000,000,000 people who use our Services that is as strong, if not stronger than our internal culture of how we build things. And we think we need to do that over the next 10 years in order to actually achieve these goals of helping Connect everyone and understand the world and help build the knowledge economy and the economy that we all want. So we're really excited to do that. And a lot of what we've started doing is just looking at the problems that people have using our services and trying to fix them.
And some of the problems are really basic things like Content doesn't load as quickly as people want. So we focused a lot on making that go quickly. But one of the biggest themes of feedback that we hear Is that people always want to make sure they understand how they're sharing content on our service. So recently we've taken A bunch of steps to make it a lot more clear to folks who they're sharing with and give them even more control than they've had in the past. Including just this morning, we announced that we're launching this privacy checkup for everyone On Facebook.
So now when you post, we're going to have this thing pop up that kind of suggests to you, hey, here's who you're sharing with, Is this who you want to be sharing with? Here are some different audiences that might be If you're if we think that you might be sharing more broadly than you intend to be, I'm suggesting that maybe you share with a few fewer people, maybe just your friends. And this we think it's taking our responsibility seriously to make sure that people have control over who they're sharing with. And over time, we think that that is going to serve everyone who's using Facebook better and help us achieve the long term goals that we have. But this is an important symbolic shift for our company, taking loving the people who we serve as seriously as our own internal culture of building things, which we've been very proud of over the last 10 years.
So I just wanted to close with that. And now I guess we'll invite Cheryl And Elliot, and David up to help answer questions as well. So we will shortly open for general Q and A. We anticipate taking questions until at least 12:15. The queue is already formed, so please go ahead and line up.
One moment please. So that we may answer as many questions as many stockholders as possible. We request that you only ask one question. Before we open it up to general Q and A, We're honored to have with us the Reverend Jesse Jackson. And I'd like to invite Reverend Jackson to the microphone to make a statement and ask the first question.
Thank you very much.
Good morning. Do you Mark with your Special genius where they embedded all of us are. We offer a lot of particularly Silicon Valley Present position on progress and the NSA, we're grateful for that. Cheryl for your book Lean In, which we want an autograph copy of today. David and Christian McGrath, Greater Home, North Carolina, Donald Graham and other Board members, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present to you today I ask for all of you to give a special moment of silence for the girls lost in Nigeria somewhere.
Yesterday, a young woman who had been kidnapped from a mother and taking over 10 years It's found on Facebook and for that we are grateful for this special technology. But for the girls of Jerry, shall we give a moment of silence? Amen. I wish Doctor. King and Chavez Mandela, we're here today.
They may never have used a mobile phone, Doctor. King and Schindler did not, but a long witness The wonders of Facebook and other technology transforming our world, what they fought for and died for, the vote, The pool now on the tank, rapid rise access to guns has much too much violence, hatred and fear. I speak to you today representing the Rainbow Push Coalition about the need to open up a new era of growth and inclusion of African Americans, Latinos and other people of color in Silicon Valley's technology industry. Inclusion leads to growth and when there's growth, Everybody wins. Facebook is uniquely positioned to lead this new era.
We will not know how good Silicon Valley Everybody can participate. All we ask is that everyone plays by one of the rules and that there is an even playing field for all It's tomorrow imperative. We were mutually beneficial of two way trade. We share consumer patterns together, pay taxes together. We serve in the military together to keep our nation secure.
We should share in America's opportunity and growth together. There is an imbalance, too much one way trade, too many left out, too many gaps between the surplus and deficit cultures, just a canyon. Those who left out represent money, market, talent and location. You have technology, expertise and resources. We can all win if we close the gaps.
African American and Latino colors will comprise a huge and fast run part of our Your customer base. In a short period of time, minorities will comprise a new majority population in California. Technology is supposed to be about inclusion, but sad that patterns of exclusion remains the order today. Let me state some Thanks. 0 Blacks and Latinos in the C suites all too often.
Tech powerhouses Including Facebook, Apple and Google, new media companies like Twitter, have 0 blacks on their Boards of Directors. In the C Suites, Facebook, like Facebook, Twitter, Facebook, Apple and far too many other companies have 0 African Americans on their boards, I'll let you know in their leadership positions in the C suites. And just as women leaders are now making their headway like Sheryl, Marissa Meyer at Yahoo. Companies like Facebook must build a pipeline for African Americans and people of color to lean in and move up to Schools cost less than jails. If we can't find them, then grow them.
They really do exist. Facebook and other tech firms can find us when they need consumers of technology. We can be found the CEOs and CFOs And the lawyers and ad agents and engineers as well. We stand ready to work with you in that search to find them. We really know who they are.
When we're pushing our inclusion report to the debt capital markets and ranking of corporate issuers, we report Facebook Under David Ebersman's leadership, included several minority women and people of color in your initial IPO. And for that, we are grateful.
Sir, I'd ask you to respect the questioner. Thank you.
When the comments from NRG includes an informant, procurement, Professional services, advertising and marketing, and Silicon rather has a long way to go. There are just simply too many gaps. I make this appeal to you today sincerely, because I am convinced We are a better American and all of us are involved together. These questions I'll leave with you today. Surely, I'll publicly release your EEO-one report, update on the race and gender makeup of your workforce.
Facebook made commitment to include Blacks and Latinos on your Board of Directors. Specifically, would you agree to place a And amendments similar to Apple that require an explicit and active search for women and people of color for all the Board openings. Facebook committed a bylaw provision to mandate that women and people of color include as part of GreenSearch, the C suite level positions. Facebook commits its inclusive black minority firms in debt offerings and future financial transactions And billing pipelines for education. Let me express this profound sincere thanks to you today.
What you've done in 10 years is no less than a global revolution. The face of this new America is not tobacco. It's not cotton. It's not Detroit. It's Hi Tec.
It's Silicon Valley. It's you. God has blessed you in very Special ways to think about Doctor. King's work at 26, Mark and yours at 28. How blessed you are at such a young age to have Such a special genius and therefore a burden of opportunity to lead us to higher ground and where the government never will, but you can and you must
Sasan, yes. Reverend Jackson, it's an honor to have you here and we thank you for your support, your appreciation of our technology and also your very Strong words on the importance of diversity. We agree with you. We have a community that's over 1,200,000,000 people around the world And that's an incredibly diverse community. And it is good for us and important that the people who are building Facebook Represent the community we serve fully and that means full representation of all kinds of people who have historically been underrepresented.
We've taken this quite seriously. Over the past year, we've set up our first very explicit diversity hiring and diversity program Under the leadership of Maxine Williams, we have his spirit with us today. And we're in the early days of what we're doing, but I'll share a few words Where we're focusing at first and where we intend to grow. So our focus right now is really on trying to hire more people into the company as well As grow their careers. And so we do this in three ways.
We've built a number of great partnerships, groups like the National Society of Black Engineers, the Hispanic Alumni of Georgia Tech, Grace Hopper, Girls Who Code, Management Leadership of Tomorrow. And these partnerships have been great because they are Really helping us get great candidates and reach out. We set up last summer for the first time our own Facebook You, Facebook University, which is a minority and women Focused paid summer internship program, looking for candidates who don't necessarily have already the coding skills That we normally hire in, but people who we believe we can train. And we had a really successful summer, getting people up to speed, who had great technical Sales in the areas we need to them and we've grown the program by 60% this summer. We're also working really hard at our internal recruiting programs.
We believe as you do that transparency is really important and we're on a path to get there. We're looking at our numbers internally. We're seeing growth already from what we're doing and we would like to be on a path to share them both internally and And eventually externally.
But a lot of EEO.
Where we are right now and I think other companies you've talked to and been to their shareholder meetings have said the same thing, Which is that it's really important to share those numbers internally and eventually do that externally and we're on that same path that others are on. When it comes to Board candidates, When and if our Board expands, we are very committed to looking broadly, including looking at candidates with diverse backgrounds. And on minority owned firms, They participate in our IPO and we continue to keep in touch with them for future opportunities if we have other capital We also I know have had some contact with you. I know Maxine and our CFO had a chance to sit down with you. And in all of these things, I think we'll look to you and others For candidates.
But again, we really want to say that we agree how important this is and we're grateful that you're here with us today.
Sure. As I lean in, please like me on Facebook. I will. So the new book you sell my Facebook. I say the same closing, I made a little joke to it, I think.
The reason why our push so hard on this issue of expansion and inclusion, we didn't know how good baseball could be everybody could play. We just really didn't know. Where we come from in the South, there is a New South now because the walls are down, people behind the walls thought they were doing right well. You can have had the Carolina Panthers and the Falcons behind the cotton curtain, all the cowboys and the Texans. You can have had the whole new rule of the stream Those walls came down and we come in today not so much in process, but in the field of partnership because we know that partnership works and everybody
We'll take our first question from the audience. Thank you. Thank you. I'm neither a tax advisor, an accountant or an attorney. I'm just one of those crazy anti spammers who Seeing spammers crushed.
And I do appreciate the $711,000,000 judgment against Sanford Wallace. But From what I've read, you've recognized that it's pretty much unenforceable or at least for a good amount of the money Because he doesn't have it or he's hit it very well. And I'm thinking to be nice, you may want to forgive a couple of 100,000 Send him a 10.99 and let the IRS harass him until the end of eternity, because it is a taxable event. Thank you. I can assure you that we've not certainly committed that it's uncollectible and we're doing our best to collect it.
And more generally, I think the sentiment about keeping the site and keeping the Internet secure from bad Actors is one we certainly hold dear and we have a solid crew of folks who are working on that every day. It's just from what I've seen at the IRS, They're probably a lot more effective than your legal team at getting money and putting people in prison. It's a great idea. Candidly, I hadn't thought of it and we'll take it back.
Hello. My name is still Sheldon Ehrlich. I want to thank Mark for I'm a Palo Alto resident. I want to thank him for raising our real estate My question is regarding shareholder proposals. I talked to the CFO before the meeting.
I think that this company should try to get some of them kicked out by petitioning the Securities and Exchange Commission. Only one of these proposals, the Number 3 was germane to the company's operation dealing with voting. The rest are manipulations So this meeting to make political statements. The representative of the Comptroller of the State of New York Spoke about sustainability. He's really here to get publicity for his boss, So that he can run for a higher office.
That's happened in the State of New York. And there have been some very bad governors. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question.
Hi. My name is Deborah, individual shareholder from San Jose, California. My question will be, does So dividend paying stock. If not, will Facebook consider paying dividend to their shareholder upcoming year, etcetera?
Thank you for your question, Deborah. So we take very seriously the Work we do to ensure that we invest every dollar wisely in trying to grow the company and that we're very careful with all uses This is of shareholder capital and capital that we get from operating the business. At this time, our focus really is on using the cash we have to invest in growing the business and to trying To build some of the things that Mark described during his remarks, so we don't pay a dividend and don't anticipate doing so in Near future. As the company matures and grows, we look forward to having conversations about what the best use of our capital is.
Okay. Thank you.
Hi. I know Facebook does business throughout the world. And my question is to the extent legally possible, does Facebook notify its users as soon as about a civil, not a criminal, subpoena for their identity and information within their Facebook account. And if Facebook does not Notify the users as much as legally possible. I'd just like to know why that is the case.
So thank you for your question. So with respect to civil litigation, our policy is that account contents are not available via civil subpoenas Unless it involves the parties to the litigation and our policy in that standpoint is that people have access So their own accounts and if they're liable if they're subject to a request like that in litigation, they can access their own materials. That's the policy. We seek to enforce it in courts throughout the country and throughout the world. So that means in a lawsuit against just John Doe's where there's no named defendant, You would not produce any information arising from the federal lawsuit.
So that would be our policy and we would seek to Assert that position in court and then it's ultimately up to the judge. If you have a specific issue, we'd certainly feel free to reach out to us and we'll try to address it as best we can. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Kerwin McKenzie. And I guess it's quite a difference from last year to this year. So I guess you guys are doing well. Thank you.
I guess it's for Mark and Sharon, is that right?
I'm glad that you guys are opening the door to communication. Thank you very much. My question is really about Facebook advertising. When will you when will I be able to like talk to someone? So if I have an issue with an ad that I posted, right now there isn't any way to talk to anyone.
If I give you feedback, it just says we accept your feedback, But there's no and I can't talk to anyone. There's no e mail in. There's no phone call. There's no address. And you say advertising is your big thing, so we need to talk to someone.
Well, I think we'd
be happy we have someone here who can talk to you. We'll do that Right after the meeting. And in general, advertising is important to us. And we try we have over a1000000 Advertisers. And so we try to provide service online, so they're able to answer questions.
But when not we should speak to them, we're happy to speak to you. We'll make sure someone
Okay. And I just hope
that there's something online that we can
for everybody else. But thank you. I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Yes. So after today, I guess we have People with Facebook shirts around. So if you have a question about the service or advertising, just make sure that you find one of them and then we'll definitely reach out to you and try to help you with Hi, Dan Benton, Indore Capital.
I've been a technology investor for 30 years and I don't usually come Annual Meeting and this may be why. We own 3,000,000 shares and we're very happy. Let me bring my bag in, so I had to write my notes on my phone. First of all, Mark, I want to thank you for you and your team for Absolutely building a remarkable company. We're delighted to be shareholders.
Facebook is known for its We make money to make great services. We don't make great services to make money. That aggressive thinking is What allowed you to create the online advertising business, branded business, and to do a remarkable thing in the last 12 months It's the transition of the company from desktop to mobile. You outlined 3 very audacious goals in your comments earlier. But at FA you said we're going to move fast with stable infrastructure.
And You've made 2 very sizable acquisitions this year in dollars, but I think between the 2 of them, it's about 100 and People. So I'm sure they're great people. But you've got great people too. The company celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, you celebrate your 30th birthday. As you think about the next decade, the company has to balance Innovation with risk taking, I guess, a little bit differently than before.
Could you talk about that balance and how we don't lose what we created in the last decade?
Yes. So I guess one philosophy I have on running a company is that You get to choose what you emphasize, right? And at the end of the day, you get what you put your time into and what you put your money behind. And one thing that we've always cared about It is moving fast. Technology companies have this interesting property where there are some things that benefit as they grow, Right.
Like we have this bigger community and that's valuable because now new people signing up can have all the people they want to connect with or generally are you going to be on Facebook. But at the same time as the company grows, the companies actually get slower, right? So what we've aimed to do is have Facebook always be very fast for the number of people We have. Right. So right now, we have less than 10,000 employees.
Every other company that I can think of that serves anywhere near the number of people that we have has tens There are hundreds of thousands of employees, right? So one way that we move quickly is just by trying to stay lean. But it's always an ongoing effort and you have to make trade offs in order to be able to move quickly. So historically, one of the trade offs that we made was we tolerated some defects in the product, right? So we said, It's okay if the product isn't 100% perfect because as long as we can move quickly and learn quickly, then we'll end up building a better product for people over Time, even if today there's a flaw some of the small flaws in the product.
What we found over time is that now we have so many people who are building things at Facebook That when there are small issues, people then have to go back and fix those issues and it actually ends up taking more time if you develop with these flaws Then if you just did it correctly the first time. So, now we're choosing to make a different set of trade offs and instead of move fast and break things, which typically meant move fast while allowing some Well, what we're doing is moving fast by instead building really good stable infrastructure on top of which we can build Really quickly, because we have good solid infrastructure and that allows you to move around and do different things very quickly. So now our strategy for moving quickly It has really been about investing upfront and building the best infrastructure and tools to enable us to develop in the industry. And we think we're going to continue to lead in that and we think we're My name is Benoit Vitor and I'm from Oakland, California. I'm actually here to alert The investors about e trading, which keeps the price of the share down forever.
E trading is equivalent to using sports enhancement drugs For athletes, which is not allowed because it's not fair to others, e trading is like an enhancement For those people who use it and it puts others in a very untenuous situation is not being able to compete. And my observation is that the stocks should have been about $100 to $150 today, but the electronic trading constantly sucks After profit within seconds it goes up and down going up and down and you will never make it beyond a certain number as long as that System is being used and it's not fair to most investors. I have an envelope here for Ms. Sandberg, if it's okay. Sir, why don't you give it to one of the volunteers wearing the Facebook shirt or yes, there.
We'll make sure she gets it. Thank you. Thank you for listening.
Hello. My name is Bragi. I'm an investigator of artificial So I have a question to Mark regarding how Facebook will maintain its leading position in the next decade. So I'm very worrying about that Facebook might be displaced by Google plus if Google has Correct, artificial intelligence before Facebook does. And because artificial intelligence allows the understanding The pictures and the videos and the way that's Carlos rivals human.
So If Google correct that first, basically they will have they can implement that in the Google plus so that users of Google plus could benefit from the Orders of magnitude, the better connections between people. And so far, Google has been leading As putting a lot of resources into acquiring the talents in artificial intelligence and which I believe that Facebook is lagging behind them a lot. So I want to ask Mark, What kind of proposals are RealNet do you have regarding jumping forward and get a lead over Google in correcting Cracking Artificial Intelligence.
Well, I mean, it's an interesting question on a number of fronts. I mean, certainly different So the most recent one that we saw was mobile. And what we've seen in a lot of companies Throughout the history of the technology industry is a lot of companies don't survive these big platform transitions, right? So if you look at, for example, Microsoft, which is certainly doing well and surviving, but their operating system business from Windows didn't really Continue, the way that they wanted when people transition to using phones and tablets. And certainly other technology breakthroughs in the future We'll bring other challenges and a lot of the question that we have is what are those big technology breakthroughs going to be.
AI is interesting in that People have been saying that real AI is about to come for a very long time. And when it certainly comes, it's going to be quite a disruptive thing. What we see is that there are specific applications that are much more useful, that will probably come before what you and I would consider kind of a fully artificially So we employ a lot of these different things today. One of the things that we do is people upload and share a lot of photos on Facebook. And one thing that people do is they want to tag people in their photos so that way I can go see all the photos of David, right, or all the photos that have me and my wife in them, for example.
You can do that very easily when you know who are in the And so we've been working on building really good algorithms and tools to help people tag the photos that they And certainly something like that, it solves what you would consider a big human intelligence problem and vision is one of the things that makes us human is that we can Five people and recognized patterns. It's not full AI, but it's one of the important problems that's a benchmark for that universities and different Organizations use to measure how well different teams are doing at that. And I think we actually do quite well at that. We're recruiting a lot of the best people in the world, including I'm one of the leaders in AI, Jan LeCun from NYU, a bunch of folks have joined us from top universities and other top companies. So this is one area that we're actually investing quite heavily in, although I would be skeptical that we will see true AI within the near term.
I think there will be other technological breakthroughs before that. Great. Thank you, Mark.
And if you want to apply to join our team, Anyone in the Facebook. I'm serious. Anyone in the Facebook T shirts.
Much appreciated.
Hi, John Lin, individual investor. First, I'd like to commend Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook for not agreeing to participate in the anti poaching collusion pack that It was led by Apple along with Google, Adobe, etcetera. I think this is a very dangerous thing that was discovered, which Has led to the growth of Silicon Valley in general, the free flow of tech talent and congratulations on hiring John Meygerling from Google to Facebook on the mobile business side. Secondly, just want to wish Mark a happy belated birthday and hope that You now being over 30 years old and officially over the hill that you can continue to leave Facebook for decades to come. Welcome to the club.
On a more serious note, in the past year, there's been a lot of media coverage on the growing income inequality and of San Francisco and Silicon Valley most symbolized in the protests against Facebook and Google buses. I'd like to know how Facebook has been proactively engaging in the San Francisco Bay Area community as well as other geographies it has a corporate presence in to be a better corporate citizen. Working in the tech industry here in Silicon Valley, I'm growing increasingly concerned about the perception of the industry turning a blind eye And let them eat cake attitude that is being painted.
So why don't I take that? We take our responsibilities And as a part of a community really seriously. And we're part of a 1,000,000,000, more than a 1,000,000,000 people around the world, we're a part of lots of Communities geographically. Here in the Bay Area, we have several homes. We have lots of people who work for us In San Francisco proper, we have an active community right near our headquarters in Menlo Park in East Palo Alto and we have lots people who live all around the Bay Area.
So for us being a good citizen is really not just about San Francisco, It's really about integrating in all of those communities. And we've started pretty aggressively working first and foremost in the community that's closest to us In Menlo Park in East Palo Alto, we have active relationships with the city and with the local school district. And in fact, it has been funding local community groups through, I think it's almost $500,000 community Fun that we've had in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Moving further north in Redwood City, we've been doing a lot of work already with The school district there, we will be doing more with the city and the community as well. We have an active team.
I think Susan Gonzales is one of the people who leads that team. She's here today. Susan, if you want to raise your hand so that people can see that you're here and she can go on at quite length in some of the San Francisco obviously is really, really important. We have we work very closely with the Mayor, with the supervisors To make sure people understand the contributions that we make, frankly, we've been somewhat surprised By the response to an activity of the shuttle buses that we actually think are positive environmentally are actually good for reducing Congestion and in fact some of the surveys that have been done really demonstrate that the population as a whole really appreciates that. But because we do have an active with so many workers who are there.
People work very closely with community groups. We have a close relationship with the Mission Economic Development Agency, we've been focusing on issues related to digital literacy. We've been doing a lot of work With nonprofit groups in San Francisco and around the world. I know I'm going on lots. We're doing lots of things.
We will do more. And I think If you've heard people talk about Facebook as you hear Mark describe our vision, our vision really is one of building community and we want to do that not only on the side of virtual Communities, but also physical communities and our employees are very engaged in that. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Greg Coladonato. I'm a local resident and individual investor. I'd like to thank Mark, the senior executives and the Board for the strong stance you've taken in favor of user privacy at those times when the federal government Thank you, Mr. Jackson.
At those times when the federal surveillance agencies seem to have gone too far, just this morning the US House of Representatives passed something called the USA Freedom Act. I'd like to ask if you have an opinion on that. In my own research, looking at different Representatives' opinions. I found only one representative who posted an essay to Facebook who Didn't vote for this act and his reasoning is why not. I'd like to also know why more Congress people don't do this.
If there's anything And to follow on, Mark, your point about a better world and a more open a more democratic world, Is there anything Facebook or third parties can be doing to foster legislators to share their reasoning for how they voted on bills? And I'm especially interested because I'm actually running for the State Assembly for this district. And I have pledged to do that where I And I think all elected should do this as well. Thank you.
I'll follow-up. We are already over time, so I'm going to try to be brief and I think we're probably going to have to cut A number of questions. So we're actually pretty disappointed in the USA Freedom Act. It actually got an amendment some amendments And that expanded the scope of permissible government intrusion and the breadth of government requests. We've been part of what's called a coalition that's called the Reform Government Surveillance Coalition of Microsoft, Google, Apple, others that have been really calling for improved transparency of government requests, limited access To government by government to private user data, avoiding conflicts between governments where we often get caught in And greater accountability within government.
It's been really frustrating to us how challenging it has been to get other to get government officials to be supportive. We understand that there's a balance between national security and privacy. We think the dial has been Turned much too far towards security and much too with much too little respect for individual privacy and security of individual data. And I think Mark's been pretty outspoken about So as Elliot said, we are over time. We'll have time for 2 more questions.
My name is Hal Hoesley. I live in Los Altos Hills and I thank you for having me meeting closer to my house. But anyway, I'm being serious. I'm ex Air Force and ex IBM as of Booz Allen and people used to Bill Meade for I bill people from I advise and time. And this is an awkward question and I'll throw it out to you.
My thought was you should consider Having a committee with some people in the Board and some in your management to support boycotting Israel. And I say that only because
Okay. Please be respectful. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Okay. Thank you for your contribution. We have time for only one more question, unfortunately.
My name is Rose Gagstader. I own 4,000 shares of Facebook. I'm on my own. And Facebook made history in my life or I made history because of Facebook. I do not use Facebook for anything except I had seen pictures of my relatives through their cell phone.
So anyway, my son came home one day. He lived in San Fran and he said, Mom, I want you to invest In Facebook, in the secondary market. And where's that? And he said, I'll fill up the form for you. And he said, What's the minimum?
100 ks. Oh, that's a lot, I said. Not only that it's 100 ks, when he placed his order, He asked for 250,000 and I said, oh my gosh, they're going to be in trouble. So I pulled out money from my On my house, and which my husband had set up for me. My husband died of cancer 4 years ago.
He's an engineer of North And who had encouraged me to go to invest in stock market. He had guided me while he was alive And so I have become brave. So anyway, my son did not buy The first offer that he wants to buy at that $250,000 I was too pleased. I went back to the bank And deposit that money. And so 6 months after On March 28, 2011, he said, Ma'am, I'm going to place an order Facebook, again, Mr.
Lokey, how much, 100 ks to which he bought. On November 2011, you said I'm going to buy some more, because I want you to stay more on the stock market than Real estate because my husband has rental houses and apartments. Is it okay to I think 100, almost 110,000. And so I was underwater for over 2 years before. Not only that, that I Become braver, Fidelity representative had offered me a 50 or 60 Free trade, if I put 50,000 on my account.
I said I'm not a day trader and I don't think I'll use all of that, but I'll take it. So I did so on your IPO, I also asked Fidelity when they get my 50,000 that I want Also to have a 1,000 shares when you get distributions from companies for you. I think they get that Institutional Investors. So anyway, on your IPO, I received 2 calls. The Senior Account Executive at Fidelity at Sunnyvale left a message on my machine that I did not get any.
The second call, my daughter who is a teacher said, Mom, I want you to buy me 100 shares of Facebook No matter what price, I said, okay. So I did. But from your IPO, which you started at 38, I I think it went up to 45, I started buying. I bought it at 40.25. I bought it at 5, blah, blah, blah, And Phil, you went down to I got 1,000 shares when it was under $19 yes, under $20 Then I became briefer and saw some other stocks.
I bought 500 shares at the $19.35 Then when it went to $19 I think that's your lowest point or under $19 about 2.50 Then I heard that stock of Facebook is going down. It's going to go to 15%. I did not tell any of my friends or relatives that I am Under that I own Facebook and I am underwater. So anyway, I bought $2.50 and I'm waiting for The $15 it never happened. I want to congratulate all of you that you had worked too hard So pull up your stock because you pulled me up underwater.
Fidelity's senior account executive told me, Why did you spend too much money? I said, when they I asked them to buy money for me to New York twice, said you are putting money in A company you don't even know where it will go. This is true. So now he told me that You know that you are the only few Fidelity investors I know that have this many Facebook stocks No, I do not. But my reason is that my husband who passed away had real estate that was sold.
I want to see where I make money or lose money, real estate or Facebook. So I did that. For over 2 years, I did not sell any because I am underwater and I'm a long term investor. So anyway On your IPO, May 18, I think, 2012, you, Mark and Sharon had been Invited to be the guest of Mr. Charlie Rose.
There was an interview Please, I don't know how I get it. He had Tumblr, CEO Fei Fei, our CEO and the third one was Mark that was interviewed. And he asked you, Charlie Rose asked you, What do you want to do with this? What's your vision? I want to connect the world.
I think people do something like that is your answer. The 4th one That was interviewed by Charlie Rose is Mark Andreessen. I know Mark Andreessen It's Kevin Super.
Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to can you wind it down or do you have a question for the panel? Okay.
The story is
great and we certainly appreciate your confidence in the company.
On your company stockholders meeting last year, Your stock was 24. I asked you then, is $20,000,000 a buy and how long? You said and my answer was, no, we don't have the principal. Today, your stock is $60 Is it the buy?
That's an excellent question.
I think this is your Sorry, it's a great way to end because, one, we appreciate your faith in us. But I think more importantly, we believe we have To every shareholder, the ones who are kind enough to join us today, but also the ones all over the world who invest in us And to people who use our product every day. And our responsibility is very simple and very clear, but we think very important, which is This point of someone finding someone who's been gone for 10 years or the simple everyday things that make a birthday a special occasion or help you keep in touch with your friends. And in order to do that, we have to build a great business. And we are long term thinkers.
We don't promise Anything in the short run, but we promise that we are going to work hard every single day to build a product that people use