MANILA, Philippines – “My goal was never to make Facebook cool.”

This was among the things that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stressed when he held a public question-and-answer event at Facebook’s headquarters in California on Thursday, November 6 (Friday, November 7 Manila time).

Making a livestream and video of the event available for everyone to view, he opened up questions not only to the crowd in attendance but also from people online, saying that he thought it would be “really valuable to start doing some of these town hall Q&As with the people in our community as well.”

While some of the questions took a personal interest in Zuckerberg’s life story – including his thoughts on Facebook movie The Social Network – he answered mostly questions that dealt with the whys of Facebook’s operation and its overall goals.

Regarding the split between Facebook and Facebook messenger on mobile, Zuckerberg noted that it was a big thing to ask people to accept, but the company believes the split creates a performance boost for the two apps and says the split “is a better experience and the messaging is really important. Each app can do one thing well.”

To those who’ve wanted to understand why Facebook pages are reaching fewer people these days, Zuckerberg said the average Facebook user saw only around 100 of 1,500 stories a day on their Newsfeed.

By curating the newsfeed – and thus tempering the reach of Facebook pages that aren’t offering compelling content – he hopes to fulfill a specific goal: “to build the perfect personalized newspaper for people in the world.”

What this also means, by default, is that extending a Facebook page’s reach requires those pages to post more compelling content.

Zuckerberg also took some time out to break down some concepts: how he perceives Facebook versus how the Facebook-using populace sees it.

He said he wants Facebook to be a place where people can reliably communicate and connect with others, like a trusted utility that people can use as needed.

It’s also the reason behind the development of Internet.org. As 4.5 billion people still don’t have the Internet, Zuckerberg says the company has a social responsibility to spread the Internet and get access to people who don’t normally have it.

Asked how he keeps his passion for Facebook going, he said, “It starts with doing something that you think is actually important,” then finding people who understand and agree with his vision.

Whether it’s spreading the Internet, helping to fight Ebola, or being a proponent for diversity in tech, finding a team that will support that vision is also important. “You don’t have to be super human,” Zuckerberg said.

View the entire Q&A session below:

– Rappler.com