I'll be updating this post through the keynote -- the old school way. The wifi in the room is being slammed and I'm online via 3-G. Should start in a few moments.
2:00: The music is very loud so something must be about to happen. Are they trying for a Stevenotes thing? If so, poor Mark.
After the jump, read my "raw" notes:
THESE ARE RAW NOTES, NOT QUOTES
Question: All the stuff written has been about corporate side. Talk about the role of Facebook in the world.
Zuckerberg: What we're trying to do is just connect and communicate more effectively. Build more trusting relationships and enrich their lives. Now launched in Spanish. Taking off in Columbia to be used to revolt.
Q: Did you ever think that would happen?
Z: No. (With a pause that says, you're stupid.)
Q: Why do people need Facebook -- why not just the Internet.
Z: We're not trying to build communities, just to help communities that exist already communicate better.
Q: Facebook and terrorism. (Who is this interviewer???)
Z: Facebook has a large population in Lebanon. Terrorism doesn't come from a deep hatred of anything...a lack of understanding and connection. Youths in Lebanon and they're relatively poor. The spend time with their Imam and studying under this person. They don't really have other options. On the side, they'll go out with their friends and drink on Saturday night (drink???) and pick up girls. (Drifts into photos of people with guns) But now with Facebook, they can have a broder understanding of what's going on in the world. Have a different perspective. We're not the only ones doing this. It's a bigger trend -- enabling these connections.
(I'm going to interupt here and say something off the top of my head: This interviewer is remarkably bad and Mark Zuckerberg sounds amazingly as if he's in his early 20s. )
People are audibly groaning at how bad the interviewer is.
Z: A lot of people thought we were a college thing for a long time.
I think the audience is going to rise up and remove the interviewer from the state.
Z: We want the way we make money to be in line with the way people use the site. The people express their identity -- some of that is commercial. We're trying to basically help people to share this information. That has a significant overlap with how we want to make money.
Q: Pressure on you to "crack this bigger thing." Is MS happy?
Z: I'm pretty sure they're happy. It's going really well for both of us.
Q: You announced the world of advertising is changing. So how far along are you in implementing this?
Z: When we announced that we were ahead of ourselves. We hadn't got it figured out. I was wrong. The theme is correct. We think the change and economic engine behind the site is correct. But we have a lot of change and things to build before we get there.
Q: Beacon?
Z: Beacon is not a part of the "ad team" but the platform team. Our DNA as a company are not about all of the social services that other are building. Some are going to be in Facebook.com. Much will be on the rest of the web. Increasing, we want to push information back from other parts of the web and share that with their friends on Facebook. Beacon was our first attempt at this -- and it was part of the ad strategy that we had. We viewed it as a very important trend for these social services to push out -- and to share back. We made lots of mistakes about how we communicated it and implemented it. We made a lot of mistakes. We're just a new company and we're learning how to do things.
Q: The newsfeed things was a bigger deal -- that concerned people about privacy -- is there something about where FB is heading that conflicts w/ people's need for privacy.
Z: 20% of people on FB share their cell phone number. Because we give them control of that kind of information at a "granular" level. Almost every time we've made a mistake is where we didn't give people control of their information.
Q: What about complaints that apps are frivolous?
Z: There are big changes being developed now. We allow developers to get to the point of where people think they are "spammy" and then we stop them. We are now integrating something that rewards people who are gaining trust. Instead of being a rules-based system, it will be more "trust-based." We are going to be setting less problems.
Q: What about rumors that you are launching an iTunes killer? Talking w/ labels?
Z: We talk with lots of people all the time. There are lots of music applications already on Facebook. We have nothing to talk about now....We're just building a base. Some applications we've develop ourelf, but people can use our Platform.
Q: (She drifts into talking about "her book") You're the youngest billionaire on Forbes. You don't really think the business is worth $15 billion?
Z: As a company, what we're focused on is not the financial information. It's the themes we're talking about today. Helping people communicate. Developing this platform. We just want to build a business.
Z: We want to attract people (employees) who want to do what we're trying to accomplish. Having such a focus on the money doesn't always help because the people who want to self-select because they want to make money quickly is not attracting the right people. Revenue and value of the company are a trailing indicator of the value in what we're building.
Q: About not going public or being bought. Does having a huge valuation help stop the speculation.
Z: We're not make any decisions based on that. It's not about the value. For an IPO, it's not our goal. It's not what our focus is. We want to be clear, an IPO is not our focus.
Z: (Referring to 2006 and Yahoo acquisition) We thought, we now have a chance to build a platform that is really going to make a difference. How many times to you get to make that decision: zero or one. So we said, let's go for it.
Q: The word on the street is that people other than you wanted to sell. Have you gotten rid of those people?
Z: We have made some changes.
Q: Something about management changes
Z: A lot of our changes are just about expectations and what people are trying to get out of this.
Z: How do you know this stuff?
Q: i wrote a book about you.
(Observation: This is really not going well for this interviewer. She's flirty, nervous and is clueless that the audience believes she is doing terribly.)
Z: Having someone (Cheryl) who can help us scale is critical. (About having a woman in a senior role in a male-dominated environment.) I don't think it's that big a deal. She has a good track record.
Z: We now have over 500 employees. We have over 200,000 developers. We need someone focused on product management.
Z: (About stepping back from the product and running the company.) We have a collaborative culture. Kholer is going to bring scale and help organize it.
Q: Why do you want to stay CEO. Most founders hate to be CEO. Do you want that level of control?
Z: The CEO sets the tone. Direction. Being in that role is a good way to make sure the organization focuses on the right things. (Lists lots of different areas of focus.) As the organizaiton grows, the CEO helps organization keep eyes on the goal.
Q: When I was at BusinessWeek (ramble, ramble), you consider yourself a technology company (ramble)
Z: There are parts of the company that aren't technical, but we have lots of people in all areas that have a technical background. Having that background provides people with an empathy for developers.
Q: Has bounds books where he writes down everything he thinks about the company and where it's heading. Longhand and on paper.
She's twisting her hair.
Z: You have to ask questions.
(People start cheering -- Some give a standing ovation. She still doesn't understand how bad she's doing.)
Question from audience: re: controlling information.
Z: We need to get more granular in control. Privacy and trust are core values. We've got lots of things to work out. We're trying to do lots of different things. This is an important thing for us to build. Thank you for bringing it up.
Z: (About blocking applications) The ideal formula is to use the apps they want to and block those they don't. We want to remove "friction" like having to go to a page to add an application.
Question from audience: Other than really rough interviews, what is the biggest obstacle you face?
Z: The biggest challenge is trust and privacy.
(The Interviewer realizes the audience hates her and seems very surprised. Now a few people are feeling sorry for her because she's acting hurt.)
Question - Why can't I sort and organize my messaging. Why does it not work?
Z: We didn't intend for messaging to compete with email. The use has now approached email. We didn't work on it.
Z: A lot of what people talk about the company -- is not what we're interested in. We're interested in what's going on in the world.
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Comments (2)
She had NO CLUE how bad she was. When she started to pick up on audience reaction, she was then mad at us. I'm trying hard to feel sorry for her, but it was SO BAD. The questions were horrible, she didn't come across well...it went on and on.
Posted by Laura Creekmore | March 9, 2008 5:43 PM
Posted on March 9, 2008 17:43
As close as I can tell...this is the now infamous "Leslie Stahl moment" that Lacy may have been referring to:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200705110004
Here's a bit of video from today too:
http://www.austin360.com/news/mplayer/sxsw/73367
Posted by Bill Seaver | March 10, 2008 12:33 AM
Posted on March 10, 2008 00:33