Facebook shares rise as Zuckerberg to sort mobile errors

Facebook’s stock price has risen after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he is 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, 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.”

Facebook rose as much as 4.7% in German trading yesterday as the remarks allayed concerns over its ability to generate sales from users who increasingly socialise over handheld devices. The shares yesterday gained as much as 4.8% in late US trading. The stock had plunged 49% 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.

Facebook is lessening its reliance on the tools, and it has built an application better tailored for Apple’s mobile software, Zuckerberg said. It’s also working on an application for Google’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.