Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on American 60 Minutes tonight in an appearance Michael wrote about January 11 with the title “Facebook – Why Not Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?” Michael’s call was right, because what Mark Zuckerberg said tonight demonstrates why silence is sometimes the best policy.
The story started with what looked to be a fluff piece, until it got a little bit more challenging. One example was the question as to whether he had surpassed Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; instead of simply denying it he responded with “is that a question?” Well it clearly was a question and the right response would have been to simply say that no, he hadn’t (or something along those lines), but I can’t image what it would be like to be put on the spot like that by 60 Minutes, wrong response but excusable.
The ripping the scab off the wound moment of the night came with Beacon, and if I’d been sitting on a chair I would have fallen off it, and not due to jet lag. Asked about Beacon and as to whether users who signed up to connect with friends now felt that they were “snooped upon” Zuckerberg responded that “Beacon makes Facebook less commercial.” WTF? You can draw your own conclusions on that. He also gave an example of Beacon selling scarfs “proactively,” and said that Beacon was a good thing because Facebook needed to feed it’s 400 employees, after earlier ducking a question about Facebook’s business model (in particular a lack of revenue.)
Zuckerberg did note though that he lived in a one bedroom apartment and slept on the floor (well, a mattress on the floor), if he is truly wealthy he’s not letting it go to his head and that’s a positive thing.
On one hand his relative youth provides some justification for his reactions under the media spotlight, and yet as Kara Swisher noted toward the end of the piece, most people now regard Zuckerberg as having become “a suit.” He’s very good a trotting out the company line with a canned response, but his tendency to rely on these sorts of responses leaves him caught short when he doesn’t have a prepared response for harder questions. My only observation is that perhaps he’d be better off relaxing a little more and being more open and honest; Facebook must reach a tipping point this year in growth and people will feel a lot better about supporting him if he was little less robotic, and more importantly more open.
Update: you can see the full interview here.
I thought the article was interesting. His point about a banner ad for Bloomingdales vs. a Beacon story was pretty well explained.
@Silicon Valley Guy: The banner ad wouldn’t be in your News Feed, while Beacon ads are.
To the editor: “to night” is spelled “tonight”
I think MZ is for one way too young to run a company of this scale. @ he has no clue about talking on behalf of facebook and he is a little arrogant child.
Yeah he may be a very sharp programmer but that doe’s not mean you can represent a company. He should sit behind his computer and code, leave the business end to the big boys that what i think
“The ripping the scab off the wound moment”
Graphic.
Jared,
I’ve had about 2 hours sleep in the last 2 days, fixing but give me a little leeway.
Amit
might be more of an Australian saying, fairly common to me but apologies if its not widespread.
Unimpressed about his responses.
Zuck will be replaced as CEO sometime in ‘08. This interview was funny. The answers he gave seemed flat and without any substance. And yes he is in denial about Beacon.
To be honest I boycott Facebook. Yes I lose contact with many friends and yes it is a huge inconvenience. But the minute open social takes a new step forward I will join. Mark Zuckerberg did steal code from connectu (obvious from his responses); look at the repercussions of this action. He becomes a billionaire and connectu is left pretty much a dead company. I for one will not support this, and I urge others to do so. One great thing about the internet is that everything DOES depend on the power of the individual. MZ has constantly abused his new power in FB and I feel like he is really no longer a web 2.0 visionary. He stole the idea, and fails repeatedly to uphold the idea of an open internet.
And props on the story Duncan Riley!!!!
Meaning, of course he would never truly admit that beacon thing was any mistake — and henceforth, his previous apologies weren’t really for real.
Mate a made about million spelling mistakes in my last post.
I believe it is crucial for the further growth of this company that he is replaced, he is bringing an evil vibe to company. Somethings not right about facebook, i get the feeling they are plotting or scheming!
Johnny
@ MIke Redston I am with you 100% !!!!
Every generation has it’s hula hoop. This is a really big one. I think the big tragedy of the entire social networking thing is Classmates.com
If I wasn’t such a scrooge I would pay the few dollars and get access to many old friends, but I can’t do it on principal.
It’s otherwise impossible to find those same high school buddies on facebook.
What I can’t understand is why the hell they have 400 employees? What are all these monkeys doing?
In your post, you have “Larry Brin” and “Sergei Page”.
I think you mean “Larry Page” and “Sergei Brin”…
Matt
God bless redbull.
I’m not even sure what day it is
Mike D
the story is that Zuckerberg is thinks that Beacon makes Facebook “less commercial.”
Mark should of accepted the billion dollar buy out when he had the chance, because Facebook is going to go down in a giant ball of fire. Every social network has, and Facebook is no exception. I do not own a Facebook for several reasons, one of which is the lack of consideration for the user experience. I think greed ruins any company too, like MySpace Facebook is getting greedy with ads and the income they are producing. I think they are literally gambling all their careers away
Like a car crash, it’s hard to look away.
i thought he did a good job– exactly how you’d want to come off to the masses who don’t live and breathe this industry. he furthered his companies message and reinforced his own image in the process.
as to beacon making facebook less commercial; it gives me a chuckle, but is a perfectly valid marketing spin.
-mike
I think he lacks the humility of someone that can truely lead a company of this nature forward. I must give props to him bringing it this far, however I found him arrogant and with a lot of growing up to do…
Had never known who he was till now and has largely put me off face book as a company…
People should watch the piece themselves. Not sure this blog entry is an unbiased report of the interview.
I think the real story is….why is techcrunch so horrible at being objective? Isn’t it time you guys grew up over there?
“Facebook must reach a tipping point this year in growth”
I would say at 60 million users they have already reached the tipping point and are continuing to grow.
I think overall it was a fair piece on 60 Minutes.
I have a few video excerpts of the interview here:
http://facerevi...-minutes-videos
Cheers!
Wade
Honestly I went into the interview thinking I’d write a post in defense of him and about how well he did under the spotlight. It wasn’t to be, no bias in that but it’s hard to spin a somewhat mangy dog of an interview as being brilliant.
As for growing up Wade, get your head out of your arse and smell the truth cheese. It wasn’t a good interview…he struggles with humility and thinks he did no wrong with Beacon, that’s the way it came over. Could it be defended on the basis of his youth, yes, but it still doesn’t make it good.
Rodney
I didn’t say it wasn’t a fair piece from 60 Minutes, indeed I was very impressed by the way it started with fluff then let the hard questions fly.
The part about surpassing he google guys was quite clearly more like a comment than a question. You guys in the media love spinning stuff around.
That was like watching paint dry. The questions were not interesting. Anyways, he seems like a chill guy and is handling things just fine. Love when he said, “was that a question.” funny sh*t!
first of all, i’d never seen mark zuckerberg speak before. he’s a huge dork.
@Mike Redston, your whole comment is absurd. you boycott facebook because its founder is accused of stealing code/ideas from guys years ago under circumstances you don’t know or understand. you can’t know the details of the situation (you weren’t there–picking apart MZ’s responses in a stilted 60min interview does not count).
judge the product and not the man, let the courts figure the rest out.
also @duncan–I agree it was a terrible interview, but I think that you might be mistaking crappy responses for pride on MZ’s part. I think he was plenty humble, just inarticulate. while he was clearly trying to play both parts–the on-message PR suit and the hip teenager–he kept mostly quiet.
Facebook lost its appeal and usefulness to serious people the minute 1) it opened up its API and 2) it became mainstream whereby every teen has an account. It has turned into a popularity contest where members try to outdone the other by adding more and more stupid content (made possible by the open API) to their homepage. When it’s no longer about communication with one another but more about promotion of oneself, it is no longer social networking — the very aspect that made it successful in the first place is gone. At some point, people will get tired of it… and switch.
Stop being a Zuck hater and start being a Zuck lover.
omfg i smell the bullshit a mile away.
who wouldn’t sleep on a floor for 6 years to reap a $5+ billion payday at the end of it?
it’s like Steve Jobs taking a $1 salary, meanwhile his options fetch him $100M+ yet all the media can focus on is his salary charity.
$1 salary — as long as FTC or SEC says nothing about it… after all, what can they say?
Seriously I am disappointed that Leslie didn’t ask Mark about his business card “CEO…bitch”. What an arrogant ass he is.
This post is seriously based solely on opinion and flowed. Go catch some sleep and then read and rethink your post again.
I thought MZ did well and Facebook is doing quite well with him at the helm. Yes, MZ took a base concept that was developed by two other guys, improved upon it, and ran with it. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship. And he also negotiated himself into this position while managing to keep a considerable amount of equity in Facebook. This kid as you guys put it is smarter and has more business aptitude than most.
Facebook does need to figure out monetization before they go for an IPO, but the company is doing more things right than most companies. And they will get monetization right if I can help it.
I do not work for Facebook, nor am I a big MZ fan, but I do believe in giving credit where credit is due.
F MZ in the A
This interview was long due, Facebook has become quite phenomenal during 2007, I can hardly think of a conversation with a new person I met where we haven’t mentioned facebook at some point.
When you think of it, Facebook has moved into the mainstream faster than any other technology, even Google.
He sleeps on a mattress on the floor? We call those things “futons”!
Zuckerberg seems like a grade-A knob.
By claiming “Beacon makes Facebook less commercial”, Mark is saying that Facebook does not aspire to be like other yucky banner-sewage sites like, MySpace, which Facebook is often compared with. I was hoping Lesley Stahl would ask him, “What’s wrong with banner ads? Everybody has them.”
Either Mark is shy or he resents being compared to the Google boys, but, in terms of Beacon, clearly he was thinking along the line of coming up with a “revolutionary ad platform”, which Google has successfully deployed with its text/search-based ads.
As for lawsuits, his answer was mature — the lawyers are taking care of it. Let’s face it, it is doubtful that the guys who are suing him could say, with a straight face, that every single line they wrote were original stuff, and Mark just took them. Come on, fellas, who is “totally original” these days?
I think for not living lavishly like he suggested in a 1-bedroom apartment it’s pretty damn funny that he’s using a ThinkPad Reserve laptop. That thing is like $5,000. I understand a $5,000 computer with sick specs but that machine is a ton of money for a cute little leather casing. Pffft.
We all have our opinion about FB and MZ but people, he’s a 20+yr old guy, regardless of how big a company he now leads, as such how else would you have expected his answers to be?
What the hell is up with these bazarre “arrogant” comments? Clearly all the same person. Jealousy eh?
Unless you have been in the spotlight, I think a lot of the comments are unfair. As A PR/marketing person and one who has been on camera I think he did an ok job. I know he could have done a lot worse, when all is said and done.
I think Facebook has reached its tipping point as it’s growing at 200,000+ users a day. Facebook isn’t perfect and even when people know some company’s lie… people still use the service, why should Facebook be any different. Beacon wasn’t cool, but then again I actually read the user agreement and opted out of the process when I could.
To many people here and online take things at face value and don’t think for themselves. Mark is 23 and running this company. Will he end up like the Google guys and bring in a CEO or will he be more like Jeff at Amazone and still get to run the show more then 10 years later is anyone’s guess. However, I do know this. Facebook is a here to stay for the next while. If you like Facebook; use it and if not then don’t use it.
I thought it wasn’t really that great of an interview….
Everett: I have no idea and MZ+FB affects my life very little, but wouldn’t the question of how well he did be better put to the “400 people” MZ is “feeding?” How do you think they’d answer?
It’d be interesting to be in that office tomorrow morning.
Duane@45: He’s no Budd Dwyer, that’s for sure. However, contrary to both you and #18, it takes more than users to make a company. Friendster had a lot of users for its day.
Come on now, he’s TWENTY THREE! TWENTY FUCKING THREE! He’s a kid, a punk, just like you and I were at that age and just like most of the other young turks in 2.0. (He just got a whole lot luckier.) His time will come don’t worry…
@EH I’m not sure who Budd Dwyer is being only in my 20s as well. Friendster had a lot of other issues as well, mostly which was scaling the site. Facebook doesn’t have that issue and is more then moving past Beacon as the days go on.
It does take more the users to make a site successful, but Facebook has that and money right now and for the time being it’s successful. Would you or anyone else on here have done better on 60 minutes tonight? I know I wouldn’t have. Everyone loves to beat down on the guy, but I doubt most here could have done a better job in his position.
Is Reekn’ Beacon, by definition, commercial? Therefore, doesn’t it follow that taking the pre-Beacon Facebook and adding Beacon to it can only make Facebook MORE COMMERCIAL. Wow, I mean it’s like he’s calling the public stupid. I mean who else would believe that taking a commercial thing and adding it to anything makes that anything less commercial. Time to add this post to my Facebook rant page (ok, it’s at least partially self-serving): http://www.buzz...ebook_rant.html