Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this afternoon, at about 2 pm.
Like Jerry Yang yesterday, Zuckerberg has a lot to talk about regarding the state of Facebook, and its future.
Our real time notes from the interview are below.
Battelle is talking about how much Facebook has changed over the years, joking that Zuckerberg now wears tennis shoes, not just sandals.
First question, Battelle asks Zuckerberg about new financing rumors and trips to Dubai. Zuckerberg remains silent. In response to the question “Do you need money?” Zuckerberg says “no.”
Battelle digs deeper, asking if Facebook might run out of money sooner than they thought a year ago. Mark says that the site has grown much faster than they anticipated, but that international growth via user-translated sites is an efficient way to go. Mark also says the company has two very strong revenue lines – direct sales and online sales. Battelle asks him to break down the two streams, Zuckerberg won’t comment. He also brings up Microsoft revenue, but only says it represents a decreasing percentage of overall revenue.
Zuckerberg commenting on the Microsoft investment: “A lot of people focus on the price Microsoft paid.” Battelle asks how Facebook can ever grow into that valuation. Zuckerberg says they took the best valuation they could get and it made sense for them to do the deal. They aren’t going public for a few years, he says. “We don’t feel any pressure to live up to the $15 billion [valuation],” he says.
Mark confirms that “something more than 700″ people work at Facebook, and says they continue to hire, particularly engineers. He also says they are building international sales offices. Mark says 7% of the population of France is now on Facebook, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if it was 30% next year. They may open a sales office there, he says.
Regarding Facebook Connect, Mark says that anyone can now apply to join.
In response to a question about how closed Facebook is, he says that over time they may open up, but that users prefer using Facebook’s interface for now. He says that systems tend to move towards openness over time, uses the PC industry as an example.
Mark says their goal today is to get people onto Facebook and get them comfortable putting their personal information online to share with friends.
The next iteration of platform, he says, is Facebook Connect, which gives people Facebook tools on third party websites. “As time goes on, we’ll see this very natural fanning out and decentralization,” he said.
Mark says a flaw in the early implementation of Facebook platform is that application developers focused way too much just on getting users to add it, which moved them up the top list. Now Facebook promotes applications that actually have user engagement. Four examples: Causes, which is growing by “hundreds of thousands of people per day.”
Facebook Connect is a further evolution, he says. He says they slowed down the launch of Facebook Connect to minimize the need for painful changes later.
Regarding Twitter, Battelle asks “Is Twitter just a feature of Facebook?”
Battelle turns the conversation to online ads. Mark says they have a second iteration of social ads, which let users pass along gifts or pieces of content along with the ad unit.
Battelle ask about Facebook being banned by companies, noting that the army sees Facebook as a problem. Mark says they’re seeing the opposite trend. He says companies that used to block Facebook are now letting them use it.
Mark stresses that its still very early on the platform side, and doesn’t rule out working with Google on OpenSocial.
Mark mentions that 50% of Facebook users are active every day on the site.
will be nice to ear what he has to say.
The post says …..”Our real time notes from the interview are below.”
…it does not seem to be there.
Zuckerberg is kind of “childish”. He does not seem to have what Jerry Wang or Sergey Brin /Larry Page have. Whenever I see an interview with this guy, he looks like he is working on a school project.
Grow up Zuckerberg !
As for Facebook’s revenue…. it is a great company..innovative, revolutionary etc etc…but when it comes to marketing, it is absolutely ridiculous.
http://www.livbit.com
Below? where is it?
Lets see what his end notes are
Would be an interesting presentation from the young entrepreneur
will be nice to ear what he has to say.
not really interesting anymore. time is moving on and zuckerberg and facebook are the past.
Wrong.
In jealous rage you speak,
of the Mark Z the super geek.
You with your billion dollar cow of a website
You dare to challenge his might
his users number in the millions
his worth is in the billions…
Yet you say he is in the past
curious how many users has cash cow amassed?
I’m skeptical about the funding issue. I’m hearing rumors all over the place. My guess is that they are headed straight for a “down round”. If so, it will KILL company morale and maybe the company itself.
Sounds like much the same that was discussed at FOWA’08 in London a few weeks ago: http://events.c...ark-zuckerberg/
Will be an interesting presentation
They need to fix their advertising guidelines and the people who work there if they ever want to make some real money off of us.
heh
Facebook continues to explode with popularity especially amongst those in the workforce. I don’t see it dying anytime soon. God knows best.
I agree!
uhhh… It’s pretty damn obvious they are in a desperate situation. They are burning cash like there is no tomorrow. They are not going to be able raise funds on their terms, which means they will hold out out until they can no longer breathe then be forced into terms where they will shaft themselves. On top of that, there revenues from ads are a pittance. I imagine that by mid-2009, FB will be a creaking crumbling hulk desperate to make a deal to save their asses.
It’s funny how they avoid the twitter questions. At first I was laughing at Twitter and didn’t see the need for it with facebook status but now I see I was clearly wrong. Both are good and if you add in plurk to that mix, you just have too many choices.
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Great work! Super project. Continue working on it for improvement!
Cheers,
Juliet, globalpinay
When is the Board going to replace or just plain fire this 23 year old pipsqueak? I mean, c’mon.
Finally he’s getting fat …
Does anyone else think it’s hilarious that he says they’re trying to grow at all costs then he criticises Facebook apps that do the same?
700 engineers? I’d presume an equal number of other employees. If half have share options they’re going to be forced by the SEC to report revenue numbers (similar to what happened to Google), so and IPO or sale may come sooner than Zuckerberg wants – unless the company is hiring lots of people on contract.
Can someone please tell me where the hell I can find this video. I dont want to read about his comments!!
You just can’t talk to anyone at Facebook about making money, because they don’t know how. I think Zuckerberg and Wang should cash out and step aside and let their companies be run by someone more talented and business savvy.
http://www.schoolshift.com
No one said you had to go through school alone.
Where is that video?
Can someone please post video.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Facebook as an utility is better than other social utilities. However, we could not make the advertisement work. Interesting observation was that they charge more for non-Facebook application/sites. We got a break when we advertised our Facebook application.
I don’t know why facebook needs a sales team. They don’t seem to have much ad space on their site.
He is committed to making society more open, but barely has 35 connections on LinkedIn. Funny guy.