When 13 tech bosses – among them some of the world’s richest entrepreneurs – were summoned for a meeting with Donald Trump, one face was conspicuous in its absence.

Facebook’s role in the US election had been much scrutinised: it was accused of being a petri dish for fake news that allowed anti-Clinton stories to spread like wildfire; and the social network was employed to great effect by the Trump campaign, which built up profiles of voters to target and bombarded them with ads.

And yet, Mark Zuckerberg was nowhere to be seen at Trump Tower. Instead, he sent his trusted deputy and chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, making Facebook the only company at the meeting without its CEO in attendance.

Zuckerberg has not explained his absence, but two likely – and related – reasons may well become clear. Firstly, the man who started Facebook 13 years ago now has priorities outside of its daily running: as with many tech founders, he would prefer the nitty gritty of advertising relationships and regulatory tangles to be dealt with by someone else, as Zuckerberg focuses on his missions – the $45bn fund he has set up with his wife Priscilla Chan, or the internet.org project to bring connectivity to the world’s poor.

But more fundamentally, Zuckerberg may see a photo-op with the president-elect as harming his own political ambitions, especially if he plans to act on them sooner rather than later.

If your main impression of Facebook’s founder came through seeing The Social Network in 2010, you might find the film's portrayal of Zuckerberg as an awkward Machiavellian schemer a little difficult to square with the idea of a role in public office.

But in recent years he has been spring cleaning his image. Connecting directly to the world via his own Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg is now the family man, the internationalist and the statesman (his profile is full of images documenting meetings with Narendra Modi, officials in Beijing, and Pope Francis).

While like much of his Silicon Valley brethren, he is a natural liberal, lobbying on immigration and science research, but Zuckerberg has been careful to appeal to a wider base. In response to allegations that Facebook suppressed conservative news, he fired the team responsible and replaced them with supposedly bias-free algorithms. He has declined to take the immediate action that many liberals demanded on Facebook’s fake news problem.

He has come out as religious after years of claiming atheism, a move that a cynic could point to as practically mandatory for high office. And most recently, he announced his ambition to visit every state in the US in order to understand the effect of globalisation. “We need to find a way to change the game so it works for everyone,” he said on Tuesday.

David Fuller's view

It may seem a bit early to be discussing this possibility shortly before President-elect Trump is sworn in on 20^th January… but perhaps not.  After all, Trump has certainly opened the door for unconventional candidates who have never held political office. 

Might the possibility of a bad Trump presidency close that door?  Theoretically, yes although I think it would be premature to assume that Trump will be judged as having more failures than success over the next four years.  In any event, Trump and Zuckerberg have very different profiles.   

I think it would be a great idea if Zuckerberg ran for President in 2020, or 2024.  Governance is everything and countries with the most capable leaders generally outperform.  If nominated by his Party, I suspect Zuckerberg would win.

Here is a PDF of the The Telegraph’s article.