"Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community"

Mark Zuckerberg contrasts Facebook’s mission with that of the big tech peers to frame a different center of gravity. Apple, Samsung, and to a degree Microsoft are anchored in hardware and operating systems, optimizing supply chains, industrial design, and device ecosystems. Google and Amazon orient around utility and infrastructure, search, cloud, logistics, where value is measured in speed, accuracy, and availability. Facebook’s claim to be “in a very different place” points to a social mandate: the core product is not a device or a tool but a network of relationships. Its moats are not patents or warehouses; they’re the density of the social graph, shared norms, and the habit of checking in because friends, groups, and communities live there.

“Trying to build a community” elevates the work from features to social infrastructure. The metrics that matter, daily active users, time spent, meaningful interactions, are proxies for cohesion and participation rather than unit sales or compute cycles. That redefines responsibilities. Where an operating system manages processes, a social platform must manage speech, identity, trust, and conflict. Content moderation becomes urban governance; safety tools resemble public health; recommendation systems are zoning laws for attention. Success isn’t only scale but the perceived legitimacy of rules and the resilience of ties when stress-tested by elections, crises, or misinformation.

The statement is also strategic positioning. It suggests a moral and regulatory frame: treat Facebook less as a retailer or software vendor and more as a steward of public squares, deserving both scrutiny and a different kind of patience. It implies innovation that shapes behavior, News Feed, Groups, messaging, shared presence in VR, rather than inventions that sit on a shelf. Yet the aspiration carries tension. A community is built on trust and reciprocity; an ad-driven business optimizes for engagement. Balancing growth with well-being, openness with safety, and personalization with a common civic fabric is the distinctive challenge of the “different place” Zuckerberg describes.