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Follow UsNEW YORK, US: Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg took questions about the No. 1 social network's slowing revenue growth and its $1 billion Instagram purchase, kicking off a cross-country roadshow on Monday to promote its $10 billion initial public offering.
The 27-year-old - whose majority control of Facebook worries some investors about accountability - replied he would do the Instagram deal again if he had to, according to attendees.
Facebook aims to raise about $10.6 billion, dwarfing the coming-out parties of tech companies like Google Inc and granting it a market value of up to $96 billion - rivaling Amazon.com Inc's.
Facebook's emergence as a cultural phenomenon, whose beginnings were depicted in the fictionalized 2010 film "The Social Network", added a palpable energy and buzz to an event that was policed rigorously.
Attendees were asked for multiple forms of identification and cross-checked against a list of names. Curious passers-by asked questions to media and investors waiting to spot arriving Facebook executives.
One investor joked that it should have been held in New York's Madison Square Garden, home of the Knicks basketball team and a standard venue for rock concerts.
"This is unlike anything we've ever seen," said another investor who was at the event.
Facebook, which makes most of its money from advertising, began offering limited ads on the mobile version of its service only recently.
The average time spent accessing Facebook via smartphone in the United States was 441 minutes per unique visitor in March, compared with 391 minutes via computer, according to a report released by IT research house comScore on Monday. That exceeds the 146 minutes for users of mobile check-in service Foursquare, and about 114 minutes for microblogging service Twitter.