The Infamous Mark Zuckerberg Keynote at SXSW
When I found out Facebook.com Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be giving the first keynote talk at SXSW I was beyond excited. In a sense, it was like seeing a celebrity for me because I have been a fan of the site even before I was able to join at my university. I was looking forward to what I expected to be an interesting talk by a very intelligent entraprenuer, but what I experienced was something very unexpected.
About 20 minutes into the interview, the crowd turned on the interviewing journalist, Business Week columnist Sarah Lacy. Even the people sitting around me seemed to be instantly annoyed and fed-up with Lacy's questions and most importantly her interviewing style. I was not previously familiar with Lacy and while I am sure she has the skills to moderate a high-profile interview like this, she certainly didn't choose the appropriate style and did not take into consideration the type of audience at SXSW. Several times she cut Zuckerberg off while he was trying to make a point, but the part that shocked me was when Lacy explained how Zuckerberg can look like a bird when he answers questions. Unprofessional but mostly irrelevant.
The real turning point was when Mark realized she was leading him to a certain answer with her statements and told Lacy "you have to ask questions," which got a loud and long applause from the audience. And soon after that Zuckerberg told Lacy she was making up the fact that he "burns" his idea journals. Which prompted an audience member to yell out, "talk about something interesting." Lacy just seemed confused as to why the audience was acting this way and asked "will someone send me a note as to why I sucked so much?" to which an audience member replied "what's your email?" Daniel Terdiman wrote an in-depth play by play about all of this at CNet,"Journalist becomes the story at Mark Zuckerberg SXSWi keynote."
Sarah Lacy finally seemed to get the hint 10 minutes before the keynote's conclusion and declared she would let the mob rule "Digg style." The Q&A session is what most of the audience members had been waiting for, because in essence Facebook is their site. They are the ones that create Facebook's profiles and applications, they are the ones who should have been allowed to ask the questions in my opinion.
While many people will remember this keynote because of the journalist and her interviewing style, I hope to shed some light on the points made by Facebook's 23 year-old CEO. Casually dressed in jeans and a black NorthFace fleece, Mark Zuckerberg spoke very professionally throughout the interview and made his overall vision for the site very clear. He stated that Facebook is a personal utility, a platform, that helps people communicate more effectively and it is not just a large community. He does not see it as a large social network, but instead as a tool that taps into the universal need to communicate. In other words, Facebook is not trying to build new communities, it is allowing existing communities to communicate better. And therefore Facebook is really just one part of a larger global communication trend.
On February 11th, Facebook launched a Spanish version, which was followed by German and on March 9th French. This ability to go into global markets shows that Facebook has the resources and the leadership to grow on a global scale, which can be a major problem for companies of this size. As its CEO, Zuckerberg explained that his favorite part of the leadership position is to set the overall tone and vision for the company.
When asked about being named the youngest self-made billionare ever by Forbes magazine, Zuckerberg actually blushed. You can tell that the company's recent 15 billion dollar valuation doesn't mean as much to him as his overall vision that Facebook can be the "infrastructure upon which to solve the world's problems."
Zuckerberg stated, "revenue is an indicator of the value of what you're building." To highlight the value he has created, Zuckerberg shared two stories about the global use of Facebook. First, Facebook has a large user base in Colombia but the users are not simply signing-up to poke their friends. Users have primarily been using Facebook for the purpose of revolting against the Guerilla armies. A group on the site first formed to express their anger against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and then grew to ignite protests in 185 cities, as reported by the Christian Science Monitor. Additionally, Zuckerberg believes that terrorism stems from a lack of connectedness and shared how Facebook in Lebanon is helping to prevent young adults from joining terrorist groups by providing them with a way to communicate with friends who travel to Europe. Zuckerberg believes that Facebook allows for compassion by creating a broader understanding of the world.
So what are the main obstacles facing Facebook today? Building an easy product, allowing for privacy, and allowing for application development. Zuckerberg admitted that "people need to have complete control over their information." One thing that they are constantly working towards is trying to find a balance between complete control and default privacy settings which exist to make it easier for the average (non-technical) user. This "complete control" seems to be a hard thing to implement, and users still do not seem to be happy with the current options available given the recent uproar about users ability to delete their own Facebook account. Although it does seem that Zuckerberg realizes that Facebook is a product of its users and that he is striving to improve the site for the users, not simply build it around his own vision.
Ultimately the Facebook that we know today will not be around in the next ten years or even five. Facebook is ever-evolving as a result of its users and it was refreshing to hear Zuckerberg acknowledge that. As the company moves forward, Zuckerberg knows that "what's happening on Facebook will be reflective of trends going on in the world." Our world is of course shrinking everyday and the way in which we communicate within our own communities and between others is changing and with that said, we cannot ignore that the Facebook platform is playing a large role, working to make communication easier for all.
