Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered more than a dozen questions in his first public town hall, including why Facebook Messenger became a separate app to download and whether he ever changes his shirts.
For the last several years, Zuckerberg, 30, has answered questions from employees in a weekly town hall company meeting. Today, he answered questions from a live audience and written questions that were voted as most popular with "likes."
Facebook announced initiatives today to fight the Ebola virus, including supporting the technology for aid efforts and allowing Facebook users to donate to the International Medical Corps, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Save the Children. Last month, Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, donated $25 million to CDC Foundation to fight the Ebola outbreak, which is plaguing West Africa -- in particular, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Facebook Launches Ebola Charity Donation Button The C-Suite Insider: Intuit CEO on Leadership, Except at Home1. The first question from a Facebook user in Ethiopia was, "Mark, why did you force us to install Facebook Messenger?"
Zuckerberg acknowledged that "asking everyone in our community to install another app is a big ask. I appreciate that that required work and a bunch of friction."
"The reason we wanted to do this is we believe this is a better experience," he said, explaining that messaging in the Facebook app required opening a different tab and additional steps.
Messaging "is becoming increasingly important," he said, and people expect faster, easier access as "messaging is one of the few things people do more than social networking."
"We felt we couldn't deliver the best experience in doing that," he said.
2. "Mark, why do you wear the same shirt every day. Follow-up: is it the same shirt?"
"You will be happy to know there are multiples of the same shirt," he said, asking his chief operating officer in the audience, Sheryl Sandberg, to confirm this.
"I joined the company almost seven years ago and I thought one of the major things I contributed was [to tell people] that Mark has more than one of that T-shirt, which people found very reassuring," Sandberg said.
Zuckerberg said, "I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any energy on things that are silly or frivolous," instead of reaching the "goal to connect everyone in the world."
3. Is Facebook losing its cool?
Another question he answered from the live audience was whether Facebook is losing its "charm."
"Is Facebook getting less cool?" Zuckerberg said. "It’s an interesting question to me, because my goal was never really to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person and I've never really tried to be cool. Our model for Facebook was never to make it particularly exciting to use. We just want to make it useful. The services that we aspire to be like in the world are basic things we rely on and are there, but you aren't celebrating all day. You’re probably not like, 'Yeah electricity!' It just needs to work. It's the same thing with water and a lot of things like that."
4. How much of "The Social Network" is real?
Another question from a Facebook user in the audience from Utah had Zuckerberg explaining the differences between reality and the 2010 film, "The Social Network."
"The [filmmakers] went out of their way to get some of the details correct," Zuckerberg said, including Facebook's offices. "But some of the details in the overarching plot -- they just made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful."
"We’re here not just to build a company but to help connect the world," he said. "We take that really seriously. The thing that I found the most interesting about the movie was they made up this whole plot line ... [that] I created Facebook to attract girls."
He then explained that he began dating Chan before he started Facebook.
"That probably wouldn't have gone too well in my relationship," Zuckerberg said. But still, he said he had a sense of humor and took all the Facebook employees to watch the movie.