Members of independent consumer watchdog group SumOfUs, who are also shareholders of Facebook, have started an online petition to uproot Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from his position as the CEO of the company. The petition has apparently received 333,000 signatures, out of which 1,500 are said to be of Facebook shareholders.
The group wants Zuckerberg gone because they think that one person cannot be handling so many roles at Facebook, going on to say that it could hurt the company's bottom line in the future. The group is asking for independent leadership, especially in the wake of the controversy stirred up by Facebook with regards to news content as well as censorship over the past few months.
However, Facebook is in the best shape possible right now, posting quarterly profits of $3.57 billion compared to the $1.56 billion figure it posted about a year ago. Since Zuckerberg owns a majority of the shares on Facebook, he can easily make this go away in the next shareholders meeting. So this isn’t necessarily concerning for the CEO. However, the fact that there are some voices among the shareholders against him will not go unnoticed.
In addition to serving as the CEO, Zuckerberg has been a board member on Facebook since 2012. It will be interesting to get his opinion on this new development, although it’s unlikely that we will see a response since this is a non-issue for Zuckerberg given his position in the company.
Facebook has turned out to be one of the largest social media players in the world today. With the acquisition of services like Instagram and WhatsApp, the company has ensured that it is setting the rules in the social media industry.
