Facebook's attitude makeover boosts shares Facebook shares rose 19 per cent a day after it reported better than expected advertising sales and tried to make amends with Wall Street by providing more detail about its business plans. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, came to Tuesday's earnings conference call armed with a three-part argument about Facebook's potential to turn round its mobile business and an uncharacteristic vow to prioritise making money. "I think our opportunity on mobile is the most misunderstood aspect of Facebook today," he said. On Wednesday, investors responded by sending Facebook stock up 19.13 per cent to $23.23, still far from its initial public offering price of $38. Several analysts called the third-quarter results an "inflection point." Strong revenues of $1.26bn, plus the company's willingness to break out mobile revenues - about $150m - and articulate a corporate narrative, buoyed confidence. "They seem to have come around to appropriately respecting the reality that there is a public shareholder base that, like it or not, is an important constituent," said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research. The fact that Facebook had good numbers to match the new tone was critical. A repeat of its second-quarter slowdown would have sent Facebook's stock "into oblivion," Mr Wieser said, especially when combined with the release of nearly 1bn employee-owned shares, which become eligible for sale in the next three weeks. Facebook's vision for financial growth centres on mobile usage trends. People are 70 per cent more likely to use Facebook on a given day on a mobile device, Mr Zuckerberg said, compared with a 40 per cent likelihood to do so on a desktop computer. Last week, Vaughan Smith, Facebook's vice-president for mobile partnerships, said the primary reason people are signing up for data connection contracts on their mobile devices is to use Facebook, thereby driving revenues for mobile carriers. Mr Zuckerberg professed a fresh commitment to squeeze money from those users from the start. The more time people spend on mobile, the greater the opportunity to deliver them ads, he said. Now, business and product teams would be integrated to develop advertising products alongside new user features, he added. This is a sharp departure from Mr Zuckerberg's oft-repeated philosophy that advertising would interfere with the user experience. "What seems to be clear is that Zuckerberg is learning what is required of a CEO," Mr Wieser said. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, gave further details of the its advertising business. She said Facebook organises its advertising customers into four segments - brand-building, direct advertising, local advertising, and developers - and added that the company was tailoring new advertising products to those groups specifically and developing systems to measure their effectiveness. "We know it's not enough to roll out new products," she said. We have to prove value to marketers.