As Investors Fawn Over Facebook, Poll Finds User Distrust, Apathy
As for Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind CEO who turned 28 on Monday inspires somewhat tepid confidence as a leader, with only 18 percent of respondents saying they were extremely or very confident in his ability to run a large publicly traded company like Facebook. Yet pinning down a specific reason was difficult for respondents, who neither cited his age, temperament, nor reputation as significantly affecting those abilities.
Facebook users have consistently cast a wary and suspicious eye on the platform: 59 percent of respondents said that they had little to no trust in Facebook to keep their information private. Yet despite those ongoing concerns, the number of users (and their engagement) continues to increase. Facebook has grown to 901 million monthly active users worldwide, with personal computer users spending six to seven hours per month on the site (compared to just 3 minutes for Google+ users), according to recent data from ComScore.
For its part, the company has taken steps to combat certain user concerns, particularly on the issue of privacy. Last week, the site disclosed additional information about how it captures and utilizes data from users.
Charting a future course may prove more difficult than meets the eye for the company, according to the poll, and navigating that landscape under the daily pressures of a public company could prove even more difficult.
The AP-CNBC poll was conducted from May 3 through May 7, with a sample size of 1,004 participants ages 18 and over. The margin of error for the poll is +/- 3.9 percentage points.
The Facebook IPO is expected to price Thursday night, and the stock will start trading Friday.
-By CNBC’s Kayla Tausche and Jesse Bergman
@kaylatausche & @jbergmancnbc
-Associated Press contributed to this post.
