When Facebook went public five years ago, the world had a pretty vivid picture of who Mark Zuckerberg was. As much as anything, that image was of Jesse Eisenberg’s fictionalized performance as Zuckerberg in The Social Network: an intense, socially inept kid billionaire who always wore a hoodie, whether he was meeting with financiers or trying to screw a co-founder in court. Over the past couple of years, Zuckerberg has made a concerted effort to steer his image in a different direction.
Near the end of 2014, he began holding Q&A sessions with groups of people wherever he was traveling around the world, fielding softballs ranging from lessons on startup-building to his favorite pizza toppings. Those town halls have evolved into near-daily posts on Zuckerberg’s own Facebook page, mixing news of company milestones with personal epiphanies, soft-focus photos from his life as a new dad, and responses to user comments. “What he’s learned over the last two years is that his image in the digital domain needs to be controlled,” says David Charron, who teaches entrepreneurship at the University of California at Berkeley. “And he’s simply growing up.”
