That Zuckerberg HTML5 Quote

03 December 2012 by Rich Archer

Misappropriated quotes from billionaire social media tycoons are misappropriated.

I think the biggest mistake that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native…

As part of my research into the native versus cross-platform apps debate, I saw this quote a lot. I understand why; it’s a great quote – even if it’s taken entirely out of context.

I was recently invited to participate in a great meetup at Cape Town SPIN – “Native vs Cross-platform for Mobile Development” (hence my previous post).

We all know by now about Facebook’s fairly high profile ‘ditching’ of HTML5 in favour of native development. It was hailed as the apparent final nail of the markup coffin, with native apps proving to be the all-conquering hero.

Okay. To an extent, we HTML5-ers were probably due a little bit of hubris after rubbing Facebook into the collective faces of the web-app dissenters a few years ago. Fair enough.

But before someone churns out the quote verbatim again, can we just check our sources a little here?

When I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native… because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad. I’m actually, on long-term, really excited about it. One of the things that’s interesting is we actually have more people on a daily basis using mobile Web Facebook than we have using our iOS or Android apps combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for us. Mark Zuckerberg @Disrupt SF 2012

Context is always important.