We all love a rags-to-riches story, but a relative-comfort-to-exorbitant wealth story is less enticing. That has been Facebook's story, which, until this point, has been all about its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg: A smart kid with a good idea becomes a billionaire. What's more, he becomes a billionaire, we have all realized, off of us (or at least our data).

    And like cable companies, Facebook (FB) has competitors, but none that match its reach, which leaves users sometimes feeling a sense of powerlessness. Perhaps that is why, in the whirlwind of its anticlimactic IPO, there has been a sort of glee in watching the company stumble.

    The media, including this publication, has covered Facebook's public offering to death. Indeed, over the past two weeks, Fortune.com devoted its homepage real estate to a whopping 24 stories on the company's coming of age.

    Facebook's recent fumbles have drawn so much attention partly because of the sheer size of its IPO, but also because of the enormity of its brand. The social network is recognizable in a way that many companies would kill for: everyone knows what it is, even people who don't use it. Some of the people who use it, especially teenagers and pre-teens, see it as critical to their quality of life.

    Yet Facebook users are also quick to rail against the company for changes that tweak the experience or threaten privacy. And now, the social network is confronting a hurdle on the finance side – its stock opened flat on its first day of trading (and, at the time of publication, is down by over 13% since its IPO) and it must cope with shareholder anger, coming in hot by way of lawsuits. We all use Facebook, but can the company get us to like it again?

Pitfalls of a celebrity CEO

    Part of Facebook's branding problem has to do with Mark Zuckerberg, with his boyish face, brilliant brain, and billions of dollars. The business world seems to view the founder with a combination of jealousy and awe, fueled perhaps by the portrayal of the company's origins in the movie The Social Network, which glorified a tale of dumb luck, cutthroat cunning, and fast fame. You want to hate that lifestyle, but you can't help but want it for yourself.

    When someone like Zuckerberg succeeds so quickly and with such a huge monetary payoff, we all wait for him to trip, says Michael Dunn, senior brand strategist at California-based consulting firm DUNN. "An upstart like Facebook has the same problem that the Kardashians have: it's easy to us as a culture to knock people off that pedestal, especially when they got up on the pedestal very rapidly."

    不过其它高科技巨头曾经成功地避免了这个问题。咨询公司Brandlogic的高级合伙人丹尼斯•赖尼说：“对Facebook的这种恶毒攻击我们从没有在谷歌(Google) 那里看到。”当然长远来看，谷歌的股东都赚得盆满钵满，这也有所帮助。而且，谷歌从一开始就坚持不作恶。虽然也是聪明人利用金点子成功创业的模式，谷歌并没有成为“拉里•佩奇和谢尔盖•布林的故事”，而扎克伯格的迅速崛起则多少遮盖了Facebook本身的光辉。

    毫无疑问，苹果(Apple) 的起起落落和乔布斯息息相关。但是公司的产品深受欢迎，消费者已经学会将其乖张个性和对公司的个人化改造分割开来。“从某种程度上说，苹果的成功来自于它有一个自大狂的老板。”邓恩指出，“我对乔布斯的成就充满敬意。他让每个人都专注于一个愿景。但如果你和他共事过，就知道他有多混蛋。”

打造新形象

    邓恩认为扎克伯格的个性看起来没问题，Facebook基础也不错，有时间来打造更好的形象。“他没有早早地把公司高价卖掉，我为他骄傲。”邓恩说，“很显然，他不是为了钱。”

    从内部看，Facebook也是配合默契、纪律严明。他们的员工志趣相投，管理层也坚持其串联整个世界的公司理念。

    即使这些都没问题，Facebook在上市过程中的失误还是招致更多幸灾乐祸，而不是支持，原因可能在于其上市推介太过注重于“钱途”。“Facebook的上市很快就被人利用了，他们只想得到最高的出价。”邓恩说，当然这也很正常。CEO的工作要求他去参与整个上市过程，而那个过程基本上就只是和钱打交道。“那不是扎克伯格的错。我的天，看看他创造的奇迹，他是我的英雄。”但邓恩坚持说，本应该有人帮助扎克伯格去软化财务方面的叙述，不然Facebook的用户就感觉他们不过是公司账面上的一个个美元符号。

    那种情绪让用户积极加入猛烈抨击Facebook的大军，这不是什么好兆头。为解决这个问题，Facebook必须改善和公众沟通的方式。

    有几种可能的情况。赖尼认为，其中一种就是人们虽然不满，但还是继续使用Facebook。 曾几何时，微软(Microsoft) 也碰到类似的问题。他说：“人人都恨DOS，人人都恨Windows，人人都恨能让计算机随时崩溃的系统。”人们对比尔•盖茨也是崇敬和怀疑兼有。然而“他们最终还是使用微软的产品。”

    Yet other titanic tech companies have managed to skirt this problem. "I don't see the same venom against Google (GOOG) that you see against Facebook," says Denis Riney, a senior partner at consulting firm Brandlogic. Of course, it helps that, over time, Google stock has paid off for shareholders. Granted, Google insisted from the get-go that it wasn't evil. And though it had similar smart-guys-with-a-startup-idea roots, it never became the "Larry Page and Sergey Brin story" in quite the same way that Mark Zuckerberg's rise overshadowed that of Facebook.

    Without question, Apple's (AAPL) story became entwined with its CEO. But the company made something that consumers loved so much that many separated whatever was off-putting about Steve Jobs' personality from his personification of the company. "Apple kind of got it right because it had a megalomaniac at the helm," says Dunn. "I really respect what he did. He kept everybody focused on the vision. But if you've ever been in the room with him, he was a real prick."

Sending a different kind of Facebook message

    Zuckerberg doesn't seem to have that problem, Dunn says, and Facebook has time to sharpen what appears to be a solid message. "I'm proud that he didn't sell Facebook off a lot sooner for a lot more money," Dunn says, "It's obvious that he cares."

    Internally, Facebook seems to be running a tight ship. They are good about hiring like-minded people, and it looks like its management supports the company's stated goal of connecting the world.

    All of that may be true, but Facebook's IPO problems have recently elicited more schadenfreude than support, perhaps because its story has been so money-centric. "It kind of got co-opted real quick by people whose incentives were to get the biggest IPO price out," says Dunn, and that is normal. It is the CEO's job to direct his attention to an IPO, which is a cold cash kind of event. "It's not Zuckerberg's fault. I mean, my God, look at what the kid built, he's my hero." But someone should have been helping the young CEO soften the financial narrative so that Facebook users don't feel like dollar signs, Dunn argues.

    That sentiment makes users more willing to jump on the Facebook-bashing bandwagon, which could be cause for concern. To address it, Facebook must change the way it communicates with the public.

    This could play out in a couple of ways. In one scenario, Riney says, people will still sign on to Facebook and shake their fists at the company. Microsoft (MSFT) had a similar problem back in the day. "Everybody hated DOS, everybody hated Windows, everybody hated the hairball that made your computer crash," he says. And people had a similar relationship with Bill Gates, a CEO that was both admired and distrusted. Yet somehow, he says, "They worked through all of that."

    而Facebook要解决同样的问题，就需要把公众注意力从扎克伯格转移到公司本身。赖尼指出：“发布几则关于扎克伯格的趣闻并不解决问题。我感觉他们会利用媒体来编织关于公司的动人故事。”

    邓恩说，那得有耐心，Facebook并不需要传统的广告宣传，因为其品牌早已街知巷闻。公司应该采用全新的公关策略，把注意力从对神童CEO的宣传转移到让人们乐于登录网站。Facebook对此未立即回应。

    邓恩说，有很多现成的素材，“比如两人在Facebook邂逅而相爱，或者祖母通过Facebook看到小孙子的录像？他们没有讲述这类故事，甚至都没有为此搭建平台。”

    如果Facebook有这样的平台，那公司就可以利用现有客户群，这是乐于接受有凝聚力的正面信息的一代人。就用户的年龄而言，“Facebook的品牌努力在30岁以上人群会遇到挑战，而不是25岁以下人群。”阿伦•亚当森说，他是朗涛设计（Landor and Associates）纽约分部的董事总经理。他13岁的儿子一直央求他，想在Facebook上市时买一股股票。“这就是他的品牌。对孩子们来说，知道酷小孩在做什么至关重要。”

    现在上市的烟雾终于散去，扎克伯格和他的伙计们能否让孩子们继续喜欢那种关注的感觉？我们拭目以待。

    For Facebook to solve the same problem, it will need to flip the story from Zuckerberg to the social network's strengths."This is not about publishing a bunch of happy stories about Zuckerberg. I suspect they will use the medium to start to weave good stories about the company," says Riney.

    That will take time, Dunn says, because Facebook doesn't need a traditional ad campaign, given that its brand awareness is through the roof. The company needs a major communications shift, one that will refocus everyone's attention away from its wunderkind CEO and towards making people feel good about logging on. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

    There's plenty of material to do that, Dunn says. "What about someone who fell in love with someone they met on Facebook, or some grandmother who got to see a video of her grandchild? They're not telling those stories, and they don't even have a platform for that to happen."

    Should Facebook build one, the company has captured a generation of users who would gladly lap up a cohesive, positive message. In terms of the age of its users,"Facebook's branding challenges are north of 30, certainly not south of 25," says Allen Adamson, the managing director for Landor and Associates' New York branch. His 13-year-old son, he says, begged Adamson to buy him one share of Facebook when it went public. "For him, it's his brand. For teens, finding out what the cool kids are doing is mission critical."

    Now, after the IPO smoke clears, it's up to Zuckerberg and Co. to keep kids like that feeling that way.