Facebook: Don't call us a media company

SAN FRANCISCO — Don't call Facebook a media company.

Even as it gets more and more immersed in content and wrestles with the kinds of thorny issues that bedevil news organizations, the giant social network isn't in the least bit interested in joining the world of Rupert Murdoch.

"We define ourselves as a technology company," Facebook's product chief Chris Cox said at the WSJDLive conference in Laguna Beach, Calif.  "A media company is about the stories it tells. A technology company about the tools it builds."

The statement echoed remarks made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month.

“We’re a technology company, we’re not a media company,” Zuckerberg told a group of Italian college students. “When you think about a media company, you have people who are producing content, who are editing content, that’s not us. We’re a technology company. We build tools. We do not produce any of the content.”

The reality, as USA TODAY pointed out last month, may be more nuanced. But the bottom line isn't.

Wall Street prizes tech companies over media conglomerates, and rewards Silicon Valley tech companies with a higher price-to-earnings ratio, a calculation made by dividing a company’s current stock price by its earnings per share.