Continuing Failing Stock Means Facebook Must Boost Public Relations
Oh how the mighty fall; or, perhaps more specifically, oh how we love to build people up, only to rip them down. Thanks to Facebook’s sinking stock, social media wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg is currently feeling the pinch of public scorn – a mere few short years after being immortalized as the genius underdog in The Social Network.
Facebook’s Bumpy Public Relations Past
Facebook’s less-than-impressive stock performance is not Zuckerberg’s first time at the public relations rodeo. If we fired up the Flux Capacitor and set the dial to 2007, we’d be greeted with headlines about Facebook’s online privacy disaster, Beacon. If you recall, back then, netizens were calling for a virtual flogging of the young CEO, and his company ultimately lost a multimillion-dollar class action lawsuit, over the ill-conceived feature.
Thanks to a fantastic Aaron Sorkin-penned script, it wasn’t long before Mark Zuckerberg was lauded as the exceptionally bright, but socially awkward brainiac that birthed a new era of digital networking – MySpace be damned.
In short order, the public fell back in like with the geek-turned-startup-god and his little company, Facebook. As such, it was time for the “Mark Zuckerberg production” to go public.
Going Public
After buying mobile-based platform Instagram in April of 2012, on Friday, May 18th, the Facebook crew – in all their hoodie glory – opened the NASDAQ in celebration of their stock’s birthday.
Shares opened at $38 and closed at $38.23; millions of articles littered both business and tech media outlets about the veracity of the stock; even infamous celebrity gossip site, TMZ, jumped on the Facebook IPO bandwagon by posting stories about the young founder all day.
Despite the hype, it didn’t take long for the Facebook stock (FB) to falter.
Since the infamous day in May, the property has traded down for 41 days and up for 28. At the time of this writing, it’s selling for less than $20 a share.
To make matters even more tenuous for the social networking giant, venture capitalist luminary and Facebook co-founder, Peter Thiel, recently unloaded 80% of his stock for a cool $1 billion – a move that is causing concern amongst investors. Pundits are beginning to ask whether or not the 28-year-old CEO needs to get some new business cards – sans the chief executive title.
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