The Facts About Facebook

Fifteen years ago, I realized you could find almost anything on the internet—music, books, information—except the thing that matters most: people. So I built a service people could use to connect and learn about each other. I’ve heard many questions about our business model, so I want to explain the principles of how we operate. I believe everyone should have a voice and be able to connect. If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we need a service that is affordable to everyone. The best way to do that is to offer services for free, which ads enable us to do. People consistently tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want them to be relevant. That means we need to understand their interests. So based on what pages people like, what they click on, and other signals, we create categories and then charge advertisers to show ads to that category. We give people complete control over whether we use this information for ads, but we don’t let them control how we use it for security or operating our services.

[Zuckerberg is founder and CEO of Facebook]