The title of this blog is not what Zuckerberg actually said, but is what he really meant.

From TechCrunch Disrupt — Zuckerberg Shows He’s The Right Man For The Job:

“The biggest mistake we made as a company was betting too much on HTML5.” While building native apps that were bacially just a wrapper for the mobile web standard let it experiment quickly, it made the apps run way too slow. “We burnt two years.”

This validates what I have been saying for years… Don’t take me wrong, I’m a fan, user and developer of webapps. Web on mobile is big and the mobile browsers and frameworks are getting so advanced, and the mobile webapps so kickass, but for certain kinds of apps, especially rich consumer-based applications, native is the way to go today.

Consumers are about great user experiences and great quality. The “mistake” Zuckerberg refers to is not really that they bet “too much” on HTML5, but that they didn’t invest enough on native.

But that said, FB has nailed it down; recognizing the need to invest on the native apps and related infrastructure, and focusing on mobile first.

Any company going global must have a mobile first strategy — we know that for many around the world, their online experience will be on mobile.

ceo