Facebook CEO seeks personal challenge for the year

When Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage in China speaking shaky Mandarin, it was the result of his “personal challenge” to learn the language — and now the Facebook CEO is asking users of the social network to suggest a challenge for this year.

Zuckerberg takes on one of the challenges a year, and other ones have included meeting one new person who doesn’t work at Facebook everyday, writing a thank you note each day to someone that made the world better, being a vegetarian or only eating meat that he had killed, and wearing a tie every day.

The Mandarin challenge led him to speak the language at a Beijing University, and while some experts commented on his shaky speech, the event came as a surprise to many.

Zuckerberg said at the company’s the last town hall Q&A session, someone had asked what this year’s challenge would be. And, seeking to find ideas from the community, he is crowd sourcing what he should do this year.

Suggestions have ranged from the expected (meditation) to the everyday (fixing Facebook’s system for reporting problem accounts) to the unlikely (record and release one hip-hop album by the end of the year).

Zuckerberg responded to some of the suggestions. He reacted well to suggestions that he run one mile every day, rain or shine; that he learn an instrument; learn how to dance; or read a new book every month chosen by someone else.

Facebook dismissed some of the more Facebook-related suggestions, including one suggestion that the network should do more to celebrate Muslim holidays. While Zuckerberg said Facebook should do more in that respect, he said the challenge was intended to be personal rather than work-related.

— The Independent