While Grant and I been having a great time at SXSWi, meeting lots of great people and learning about really cool services, Sunday's keynote/interview with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was definitely a low-light.I would write up a humorous transcript of what actually happened, but someone else already did (and frankly, better than anything I could have achieved). Suffice to say, the most apt description of the entire hour long interview of nothingness (we learned that Facebook will be launching in French, everything else was a rehash of every interview or article about Zuckerberg and/or Facebook written in the last year) was b5media's Aaron Brazell's heckle, upon the first mention of advertising, "Beacon sucks." (Full disclosure: I told Brazell I would pay him $20 if he yelled that out)
South by Southwest Interactive is a conference for people interested in interactive technologies and media. We do not want to exclusively hear about the business model. We do not want to only hear the PR scripted blurbs about the company and something that seems like a venture capital pitch, especially from the Goliath of the social media sphere. We wanted to hear about where Facebook is going in the future and why users should continue to care, not a reenactment of the 60-Minutes interview with softball questions, especially concerning the very valid user privacy fears.
The web has been buzzing about the interview, how disastrous it was (especially at the Q&A section, which basically turned into a revolt), with much of the blame being put on interviewer Sarah Lacy (from BusinessWeek and Yahoo's Tech Ticker). While I agree that Lacy was less than stellar, I disagree with the assertion that the audience was pro-Zuckerberg and anti-Lacy; by the end of the whole thing, we were all pretty anti-Facebook.
In the aftermath, it's interesting to read Lacy's post just before the interview, noting that she did the exact opposite. It's even more interesting in light of this video interview right after the backlash, where Lacy seems to place the blame on the audience rather than the fact that Zuckerberg is an awful speaker and that she wasn't prepared for the conference she was actually at.
The whole Facebook backlash groundswell has been coming for a long time, and frankly, is totally unsurprising. As soon as anything has a breakout moment, the detractors are already lined up predicting a fall from grace. However, after that trainwreck of a keynote, the whole "Facebook has jumped the shark" cliche feels a little bit closer to reality. Don't get me wrong, I hardly think Facebook is going anywhere, but a surefire way to make your service less useful for its actual members is to anger the community of program developers who are using your API to make add-ons to your service for free.
Lacy may not think that people like Zuckerberg need to talk about APIs and the future of the site as a whole -- and she may have a point, that isn't typical CEO speak for a company with the hype level and on-paper value as Facebook -- but that doesn't mean the issue shouldn't be addressed. If Zuckerberg is incapable of doing it, he should have the foresight to hire someone who is and send that person to an event like SXSWi.
In the end, I find that this whole experience perfectly personifies why many members "mainstream media" can't connect with web savvy audiences. We don't want to be fed the same lines and the same pitch over and over again. When the undercurrent of this conference is making personal and real connections, its pretty telling when the #1 social network on the planet comes across as the most impersonal.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-10-2008 @ 9:33AM
RobofKnoxville said...
As an "older" end user (I'm 34), I was initally drawn to Facebook because of the Scrabulous content. I currently have several games going - just waiting until Hasbro fixes that.
The "baby Facebooks" especially designed for certain demographics have drawn me away, one for realtors and real estate investors http://www.realestateinvestor.com, especially for people like me are great.
I agree that my Facebook page is littered with worthless time-killer quizzes and virtual beer spills, on the other hand - the simple ones lead to good ones.
Is this too far off-subject? Sorry.
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 9:49AM
Dolores Parker said...
Thanks for the nice update - I feel like I was there. Love the photo.
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 11:16AM
Aaron Brazell said...
Thanks for the mention, Christina. Though Beacon does suck (and I gave you your $20 back), the interview itself was all over the map. That Sarah Lacy show, All Sarah, All the Time.
Meh.
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 1:04PM
Christina Warren said...
Yes, you DID give me my money back! Stand up guy!
3-10-2008 @ 11:39AM
kingkool68 said...
Sarah LAcey has no idea how hard my job is...
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 11:41AM
Scott said...
Christina, have you actually read that so-called humorous "transcript" you linked to? It's pretty nasty. Not what I was expecting from Download Squad (I know you didn't write it but you're linking everybody to it so you must have read it and approve, right?)
Signed,
Disappointed
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 1:03PM
Christina Warren said...
I'm sorry Scott, I have to be honest, I only skimmed it -- I'm sorry if you were offended.
3-10-2008 @ 12:30PM
GoOrange said...
I've seen bits of the interview on the net, and read a lot of the articles popping up on techmeme, and the whole situation seems odd.
It certainly seems like she wasn't connected to her audience, and wasn't asking the questions they wanted to hear. Maybe Mark didn't want to talk about APIs, but his audience certainly did.
Lacy had an off day and isn't deserving of some of the harshest criticisms she is getting. She needs to just smile, laugh, say "I tried my best, but didn't quite nail this one" and move on.
CW summarizes the real issue best in the last paragraph. It was ironic that in a crowd of social media types, the two on center stage (interviewer and interviewed) couldn't make a connection with their target audience.
Spot on.
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 2:24PM
Jeff said...
Is it me or has Download Squad greatly reduces coverage of worthwhile downloads and instead gotten into the same tired "what's-happening-on-the-web" coverage as a thousand other sites?
By my count, just TWO of the last ten posts on the site (as of 11am Pacific) are a download and one of those is the Time Waster (a cool feature, IMHO). I suppose you could say THREE are downloads if you count the reference to IE8 beta's issue with Windows update.
Bring back the download pointers/reviews... please?
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 3:14PM
Grant Robertson said...
Jeff: We cover lots of stuff. It's what we do. Besides, you know you love us.
Yours forever,
-Download Squad
3-10-2008 @ 2:26PM
Jeff said...
sorry - "greatly reduceD.."
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 5:00PM
Barce said...
I love your last sentence, Christina, and am posting it hear again because it's something we seriously need to think about:
"When the undercurrent of this conference is making personal and real connections, its pretty telling when the #1 social network on the planet comes across as the most impersonal."
Reply
3-10-2008 @ 5:23PM
zkam said...
If you're interested, listen to the latest TWIT podcast. They analyze/discuss this quite a bit.
http://twit.tv/135
Reply
3-11-2008 @ 8:49PM
moby said...
I'm an old school web geek. I remember the prodigy days (and before but I'll shut up about that). I've abandoned friendster, tribe, myspace. Facebook is next in line if they can't get it together. As usual, a great idea twisted and blown apart by greed. Most days, the site is more of an annoyance than a tool.
I realize they have to come up with a successful business model however, try to remember Facebook, users have to find your site USEFUL.
Reply
3-12-2008 @ 3:48AM
magoo said...
Once you guys get away from scouring the 'net for usefull utilities (Remember ? the download part of your name ?) you start to act like drunk frat boys - paying someone else $20 to heckle shows us where your balls are.
So the interview is SOO boring you can't get off your arse and go find something interesting for us ... at SXSW ?
Reply
3-16-2008 @ 12:03PM
Bill K said...
It's only a matter of time before Facebook's investors remove Zuckerberg as CEO. Kid has virtually no business experience and will run it into the ground if they let him. A CEO should not be described as an "awful speaker".
If Zuckerberg was smart, he'd bring in an experienced CEO to run the company and take a chief architect role.
Unfortunately, he appears to be getting caught up in the control factor that so many young entrepreneurs do.
Reply