Facebook Interviewer Heckled at Web Conference

jriding writes "Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old billionaire, was the keynote speaker at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy took the stage to question Zuckerberg, but the audience quickly grew tired of the topics she focused on, claiming that the real issues were being ignored. "Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview," claimed audience member, Jason Pontin." The audience apparently wanted to know more about privacy and portability issues, which I guess shouldn't surprise anyone here.

Comments

It's a difficult balance

[BadAnalogyGuy]

On the one hand, you want to be able to post pictures of yourself passed out in your own vomit, stripped down to your panties and french kissing another sorority sister, and simulating fellatio on a blow up doll. On the other hand, you don't want people to be able to copy the pictures and send them around the web.

I think the right word to describe this is FAIL

You can't have your urinal cake and eat it too.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[TubeSteak]

You can't have your urinal cake and eat it too. I'd settle for Facebook making new privacy busting "features" opt-in instead of opt-out.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[montyzooooma]

I'd settle for Facebook making new privacy busting "features" opt-in instead of opt-out.
The BBC ran a Money Programme show about social sites earlier in the year and a lot of the people interviewed were shocked and disappointed that their information was being skimmed for advertising purposes. They just wanted to be left alone to enjoy their online embroidery circles, or whatever. But at the end of the day someone has to pay. Assuming you're unable or unwilling to disable the ads isn't it better to be looking at TARGETTED ads rather than random ones?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Hatta]

Assuming you're unable or unwilling to disable the ads isn't it better to be looking at TARGETTED ads rather than random ones?

No, marketing is supposed to make you spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spent. If not that, then it's supposed to make you spend money on an option you wouldn't have otherwise chosen. It does this through emotional manipulation, rather than presenting facts and arguing them well, so the better marketed option is usually not the best one.

So ads that are targeted towards me are likely to induce me to spend money I would not have otherwise, and they're likely to make me choose a less optimal option by manipulating my emotions. Random ads are less likely to affect my behavior, so I find them more acceptable. There's really *nothing* good that can come from exposure to marketing.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[PFI_Optix]

And no matter how hard a webmaster tries, it's impossible to prevent someone from getting pictures off a site. You can prevent "Save as", you can even do things like set the displayed image as a table background with a transparent picture over it, but you can't keep them from taking a simple screen cap and cropping it. Even if you could, it's always possible to point a good camera at a good monitor and get a near-perfect reproduction.

If you don't want specific pictures of yourself being available to everyone, don't make them available to anyone. No matter how "secure" you make it, the internet makes it possible for just one person with the time and know-how to circumvent security and share the content (or the method of circumvention itself) with the rest of the world. Tangent: The same can be applied to copy protection schemes...it just takes one person to render them useless at preventing all but casual "hey can you copy that disk for me?" piracy.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Briden]

Marketing is supposed to make you spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spent?

No, marketings purpose is simply to get you to buy a given product. Whether or not you'd have bought that product or a similar one is irrelevant, the purpose is to increase the chance that you buy that particular one, contributing to the revenue of that company who is producing the widget.

Some advertisements use emotional manipulation. Some are informational, aesthetic, logical, or price based. It's a big competitive soup of screaming focussed on getting one thing, YOUR dollar.

I have a few dollars, some expendable, and I am willing to part with them for the right thing, stuff I would have bought anyway, as well as new and innovative products that I gotta have. For me it's DJ gear and music, for some it's antique art.

Personally, I mind LESS if the ads are targeted to me. and there is a better chance I might actually buy some of the ads i have "opted in" for. Unlike the mass advertisements, for example, McDonalds, who waste millions on advertising and will never convince me to buy another hamburger, I don't fall for their crass bullshit. 100% Beef my Ass!

Ads are here to stay, they suck for the most part, but they power the finances that drive the web, so we can't get rid of all of them. Click an ad for something you support today!

(and put a bunch of people you don't into your host file) ;)

Re:It's a difficult balance

[CodeBuster]

Random ads are less likely to affect my behavior, so I find them more acceptable. Why not declare your independence from ads permanently? Adblock Plus...accept no substitutes.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[realthing02]

It's not even really worth posting, but a lot of advertising isn't to get you to buy an unneeded option or spend money you wouldn't have, but get you to choose one product over another. Brand familiarity goes a long way when you have to buy something that you've never bought before.

A good example is something like a carpet cleaner. I never had to worry about such things before I got my own apartment/house. But when I inevitably spilled something I went to Target and bought one of them. I bought Resolve because I knew about it from TV or something stupid*, and it worked on the stain. So we all win, right?

It might also have been on sale, as that's generally how I buy something :-)

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality slap : If you post your image on the internet it can and will be copied. you can do NOTHING to stop that from happening.

It blows my mind how dumb the average facebook and myspace page owner is.

Although the amount pf passed out in vomit photos should be telling me the average IQ.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Angostura]

Because I want the sites that I enjoy visiting to survive?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[jacobw]

Ironically, that's the viewpoint marketers would love their clients to believe: "We say magic words that make people buy your product even if they have no interested in it!" Of course, if this model were accurate, heavily promoted products would never flop.

Another viewpoint is that of classical economics, which holds that everybody is a strictly rational actor, seeking to optimize their own best interests. Under this model, more targeted advertising is better, since it provides you with new information which you can then use to maximize your utility. Of course, if this model were accurate, there would never be stock market bubbles.

So maybe it's reasonable to conclude that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. People are neither sheep nor Vulcans. Under this model, I'd say targeted advertising is maybe a little better than the non-targeted kind. It makes it a little more likely that the thing I'm being sold is something I actually would want even without the advert.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Fex303]

No, marketing is supposed to make you spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spent. If not that, then it's supposed to make you spend money on an option you wouldn't have otherwise chosen. It does this through emotional manipulation, rather than presenting facts and arguing them well, so the better marketed option is usually not the best one.

This argument is flawed on several levels.

First off, most marketing is supposed to make you choose one particular brand over another, as opposed to buying something you wouldn't otherwise buy (since that's hard to do). For example, you're going to buy (say) soap anyhow, the advertising just tries to convince you to buy one brand rather than another.

Secondly, what you term 'emotional manipulation' is generally referred to as branding. In many cases a rational argument cannot be made for why you should buy one brand or another. For example there is rational argument to be made for fashion. So instead fashion labels project an image or emotion and hope that this attracts people to their brand. Also, lots of brands are marketed using rational argument. Some sort of facts form the basis of most ads, but obviously a 30-second TV spot isn't exactly long enough to go into depth about (say) soap composition. Besides which, it's a sad fact that most of the general population don't understand lipid composition all that well, and even if they did, they don't care about it. If your emotions are really manipulated by what happens in the commercial breaks, then I'd suggest that advertising is the least of your problems.

Lastly, even if we were to accept your arguments, it doesn't follow that the 'better marketed option is usually not the best one'. At best you're arguing that they're uncorrelated, but I would make a counter-argument that a company that has a competent marketing department is more likely to have other competent departments, and therefor will be making a better product.

I'm not suggesting that all marketing or advertising is good, or even that most of it is. And there are real issues, like the continual intrusion of advertising into public spaces. But you were making blanket statements, so I thought I'd throw a little debate into the mix.

Full disclosure: I work in advertising.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Hatta]

No, marketings purpose is simply to get you to buy a given product. Whether or not you'd have bought that product or a similar one is irrelevant, the purpose is to increase the chance that you buy that particular one, contributing to the revenue of that company who is producing the widget.

Lets think about it this way. In the absence of marketing a wise, informed consumer will pick the best option for their needs. So marketing can't influence that choice if it's already optimal. The only thing for marketing to do is to convince you that their non optimal choice is optimal. i.e. the entire purpose of marketing is to mislead.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[SpiritGod21]

Which is why you disable AB on sites you enjoy (like, say NYTimes, Slashdot, or Penny-Arcade) and leave it for sites you don't (in my case, MySpace). See the ads you want, block those you don't.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[maxume]

It should be "You can't eat your urinal cake and have it too." because you can carry it around all day and then, at the end of the day, eat it.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Fex303]

In the absence of marketing a wise, informed consumer will pick the best option for their needs.

In the absence of marketing a wise consumer won't be informed, since they won't know what's out there. Who do you think sends out press releases, review copies, etc.

You make it sound like there's an optimal product out there that all consumers would be best off buying.

To use a real-life example, I can't afford to spend lots of money on orange juice. If I did, I would buy the organic brand with no added anything. However I don't buy the store brand, because it tastes terrible (too sweet). So instead I buy a mid-range brand.

All of those brands have good reasons to exist and reasons to advertise. (To remind people to buy orange juice, to explain what they're all about, etc.) None of the brands are trying to manipulate people into buying something they don't want, simply to provide the right product to the right people.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[ThreeE]

In the absence of marketing a wise, informed consumer will pick the best option for their needs.

How did the consumer become informed without marketing?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

On the one hand, you want to be able to post pictures of yourself ... stripped down to your panties and french kissing another sorority sister, and simulating fellatio on a blow up doll.

Link please.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Hatta]

First off, most marketing is supposed to make you choose one particular brand over another, as opposed to buying something you wouldn't otherwise buy (since that's hard to do). For example, you're going to buy (say) soap anyhow, the advertising just tries to convince you to buy one brand rather than another.

Yes, that was the gist of the second sentence of my post.

Secondly, what you term 'emotional manipulation' is generally referred to as branding. In many cases a rational argument cannot be made for why you should buy one brand or another.

If they're not distinguishable by features, then choose on price. If they're the same price, it really doesn't matter. But you'll be hard pressed finding any recognizable brand that doesn't have a cheaper no-name alternative.

For example there is rational argument to be made for fashion.

There is? Do tell.

Also, lots of brands are marketed using rational argument. Some sort of facts form the basis of most ads, but obviously a 30-second TV spot isn't exactly long enough to go into depth about (say) soap composition.

Just because facts are used doesn't mean the argument is rational. It's not truth, it's truthiness.

Besides which, it's a sad fact that most of the general population don't understand lipid composition all that well, and even if they did, they don't care about it.

True, but soap choice is hardly an important decision for one to make.

If your emotions are really manipulated by what happens in the commercial breaks, then I'd suggest that advertising is the least of your problems.

Oh that's just being silly. Obviously I'm not becoming distraught because of advertisments. But to claim that the constant barrage of emotionally laden imagery has no effect on you is just silly.

Lastly, even if we were to accept your arguments, it doesn't follow that the 'better marketed option is usually not the best one'. At best you're arguing that they're uncorrelated, but I would make a counter-argument that a company that has a competent marketing department is more likely to have other competent departments, and therefor will be making a better product.

No, my arguments didn't directly show that, but from experience that seems to be the case. Companies that make crappy products tend to make up for it with marketing. Companies that make excellent products don't need to trick people into buying them.

Full disclosure: I work in advertising

This is for you.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[The Evil Couch]

You can prevent "Save as",

No, you can't. Using a javascript to do retarded things upon a right-click is old hat. Modern browsers let users disable that functionality.

you can't keep them from taking a simple screen cap and cropping it. Even if you could, it's always possible to point a good camera at a good monitor and get a near-perfect

Yeah, or someone could take 10 seconds to scan through the page's source code for images or use the handy "Media" tab in Firefox's "page info". Then, they have a direct link to all of the images in the document and can take whatever they want.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[mapkinase]

Is there a specific time slot you allocate for watching ads? Like, hmm, I need a new external drive, let me see some ads at 5pm...

Or is it that you have an extra processor in your brain, so when you are actually reading some email with the subj "[libSBML-discuss]", this additional processor records: "TigerLogic XML database" - useful! Check out SkywaySoftware.com. Wow! XSLT visual editor! and "easy to use"!?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

On the one hand, you want to be able to post pictures of yourself passed out in your own vomit, stripped down to your panties and french kissing another sorority sister, and simulating fellatio on a blow up doll.

Which is how Sarah Lacy should have conducted the interview.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[mapkinase]

google search.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[AnyoneEB]

Perhaps there is a definition confusion here. I do not care if companies maintain informative (and, if they want, flashy) websites and show up on a web search for their product type. That is marketing, but it is not intrusive. Also, consumers are free to look up review sites which will probably be less biased than the company's own website to discover products.

On the other hand, advertisements show up when I am not looking for information on the product/product type they are advertising, and are therefore just an annoyance. Admittedly, this does not affect me much because between ad blocking in web browsers and mostly watching TV shows/movies off DVDs, I do not encounter many ads.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[hal9000(jr)]

You are making to fallacious assumptions. First, you assume the consumer will always be aware of the best choice for their needs and secondly you assume that there is only one optimal choice.

Advertisers want to get your eyeballs and eventually your money. But there is no way they can make you spend your money you would not have already planned on spending.

You are right. Advertisers can certainly influence what people buy, but the consumer is ultimately responsible for making the choice.

I, like a lot of other people, don't think that advertising is bad, per se, I think visually and aurally loud and obnoxious advertising is. I don't mind and I might even look at text based or even image based ads, especially if I am in a buying mode (or just curious). But flashing text, movies, sounds, roll-overs that cover the page make me 1) use Ad-block liberally or 2) stop viewing the site. I actively ignore obnoxious advertisements if I can. If I can't, I go elsewhere.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[AnyoneEB]

You are correct. Once someone that wants to release the photo can see it, they can manage to copy it and release to the world. The idea with FaceBook privacy settings is to be able to put up photos and then only allow certain people to view them, and those people are the people you trust to not share the photos. One problem is that FaceBook only allows you to base access on whether someone is your "friend" and whether they can only see your "limited profile" or your full profile, so it is pretty hard to put up photos without giving a lot of people access to them. Another problem is that you are giving FaceBook access to them, and they can do anything they want with them. A third problem is the one you mention: if you do not want anyone to see a photo, you should not put it on the internet.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[argStyopa]

"....stripped down to your panties and french kissing another sorority sister, and simulating fellatio on a blow up doll..."

So...just as an example, where would those be?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Hatta]

In the absence of marketing a wise consumer won't be informed, since they won't know what's out there. Who do you think sends out press releases, review copies, etc.

There are plenty of third party sources of product information.

You make it sound like there's an optimal product out there that all consumers would be best off buying.

No, but there is always an optimal choice that balances all the factors that play into the decision.

Lets look at your example for a minute. Mid-range orange juice is your optimal choice, but the marketing of the organic OJ has you thinking that if you made a little more money you'd choose them. Why? Because it's labeled organic it must be better?

What's the difference really? Both are made from carbon, so I'm guessing by "organic" they mean they don't use any pesticides. Well how much pesticide is there in the non-organic OJ? Is there any evidence that non-organic OJ hurts people? If the store were selling tainted OJ shouldn't you take that up with the FDA instead of just buying the more expensive non-tainted OJ?

That right there is the kind of harmful emotional manipulation I'm talking about. They're trying to make people think they're making wise purchasing decisions when it's really just based on bullshit.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[cHiphead]

I wonder what targeted ads would look like for 4chan/7chan /b/ 'ers...

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Single GNU Theory]

Because I want the sites that I enjoy visiting to survive? That's what Internet Explorer users are for.

To be honest, though, I do turn the ads back on for sites that I frequent who also run ads that aren't too obnoxious.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Fex303]

Lets look at your example for a minute. Mid-range orange juice is your optimal choice, but the marketing of the organic OJ has you thinking that if you made a little more money you'd choose them. Why? Because it's labeled organic it must be better?

Actually, no. It's because it tastes better. I buy it when I either have a bit of extra cash or think that I'll have guests over for breakfast. So I do actually know what it tastes like. And before you start going on about how it tastes better because I've been convinced it does by evil marketing, no it's really a very different product. It tastes exactly the same as fresh squeezed (and therefore varies by season), it has proper pulp, and it goes off really fast since there's no preservatives.

Anyhow, the rest of your rant is thusly invalidated.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[ThreeE]

How does a search box provide information? Oh, you meant the search results -- which are usually provided by marketing...

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Evangelion]

You are aware that taste isn't just determined by the contents of the glass, right?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Fex303]

If they're not distinguishable by features, then choose on price.

And you know about those features how? Packaging? Oh, that would be marketing's job.

For example there is rational argument to be made for fashion.

There is? Do tell.

Apologies, as you've probably realized, I meant to say there is no rational argument to be made for fashion.

True, but soap choice is hardly an important decision for one to make.

Unless you're a soap maker. But still, let's look at something like cars then. Marketed to project an emotion because they essentially an emotional purchase. That's what people actually want from their cars. You can't provide much in the way of a full description of features in a 30 second ad, so you focus one or two and explain how that will make someone feel (leather seats make you feel comfortable, high performance makes you excited, hybrid engine makes you feel environmentally conscious), because at the end of the day, you can get the feeling across more quickly than you can make the argument. But then you go to the dealership get a pamphlet that explains all the features of the car and lists things in a point-by-point fashion for people to make their rational choices with. I suspect you think that people are far more rational than they actually are. And before you blame that on marketing eroding people's reasoning skills I suggest you look at all of human history.

Full disclosure: I work in advertising

This is for you.

I guess I have to go back to using my usual disclaimer. Talk about predictable, I didn't even have to click on the link to know what it was. Also, don't be a dick about things. Even if you're doing it by proxy.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[PFI_Optix]

The alternative would be to specify access rights for each individual image, and that would be a nightmare for users AND facebook developers. Better to just leave it be.

If you want only five of your closest friends to see that picture of you making out with your sorority sister, here's a thought...EMAIL IT TO THEM. Or tranfer it via IM. Or whatever. But DO NOT upload it to any hosting site, because even if it's 100% secure from the outside, you have no idea how many people have access to it from inside the hosting company.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[AndGodSed]

Oh oh oh! If only there were something more than +5 Funny! This is funny, insightful and informative.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[bkr1_2k]

Of course you encounter ads when you watch things on DVD, they're just called "product placements" instead. The most obvious of these I can think of are all the apple computers you see in every tv show or movie produced. Apple computer has been doing this for a long time, so that most of the movies you see with any kind of computer show Apples while we all know they simply don't have that much market share.

Another famous one was the "Back to the Future" Pepsi ads built into the movie. They're everywhere, but they've become more subtle over the years so it's not as intrusive, which is fine by me. It's the false connection of popularity and sex appeal in products (especially the ones that are completely unrelated to sex or popularity) that annoy me and that's generally less disgusting in product placement situations.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Fex303]

Yes. I was a psych major. I know all that. Which is why I included a list of physical differences between the products...

Re:It's a difficult balance

[FLEB]

Why are you even going to sites you don't like?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps because you need to visit a site at least once to know if you like it or not?

Re:It's a difficult balance

[The MAZZTer]

Don't forget those silly flash sites where you can't save images... with those usually you end up downloading the SWF and dumping the images/sounds from it with a tool.

Sometimes it gets more complicated (the SWF downloads the image files or another SWF with the image files separately) but then you can still see what happens in the decompiled SWF code. And if all else fails, Wireshark can trap all the HTTP traffic and you can identify individual files downloaded, and even rip the files from the captured HTTP streams (I've done this to save some streamed content).

And of course the browser cache may also hold what you seek.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[mapkinase]

Dude, your ball park is huuge (with the voice of Yaphet Kotto).

Re:It's a difficult balance

[asc99c]

When I sold my house the estate agent website had an SWF that downloaded the images and made it tricky to save. I ran Firefox's tamper data add on to see where it was getting them and found a nice image server with the full high-res wide-angle photos their photographer had taken.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[StikyPad]

I'd settle for "social networking" sites to go the way of GeoCities.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[onetwentyone]

Just a quick word from someone else who works in marketing (though my role is a web designer), Bill Hicks has no clue whatsoever what marketers and advertisers actually do. Just my two cents.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[h4rm0ny]

He picked a bad example when he went for the orange juice. I have an empty carton of organic orange juice next to me right now - tastes much nicer than the non-organic and far, far better than the dilutable stuff. But in both your case and mine, we have come to that conclusion ourselves. It's not marketing that makes the organic stuff taste better. Our choice is informed by a different source of information (experience in this case) rather than advertising. So I agree with what you say but draw a different conclusion - marketing is not necessary in this case for me to make an optimal choice and the only possible effect of marketing is to lead me to make an non-optimal choice.Take any argument to extremes or apply it in all cases and it's going to break down, but I would often agree with the OP who said that directed marketing has a negative effect on the viewer.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[DavidD_CA]

Isn't signing up for Facebook your opt-in?

Don't like it; don't use it.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[GoodbyeBlueSky1]

That's usually the type of advertising I mind the least, as it adds a layer of realism if used competently. I'd rather Marty drink a Pepsi than a "Cola" movie prop.

On rare occasions this can even work in reverse. Thanks to product placement I found out that plants really crave this stuff (it's got electrolytes).

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what targeted ads would look like for 4chan/7chan /b/ 'ers... J-List, full of 4chan-worthy products. Last time I checked they had banner ads on 4chan.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[bemo56]

Usually cause someone on /. has a funny link as their sig :D

Re:It's a difficult balance

[piojo]

Marketing is supposed to make you spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spent?

No, marketings purpose is simply to get you to buy a given product. Marketing is also intended to make you think about a brand or product, and this even works on cheap people like me. (I am almost never swayed to buy based on advertisements, because the thing being advertised is almost never the best price or value.) But even so, ads make a brand stick in my mind, and occasionally, in absence of all other information, I will buy the brand that I have heard of over the one that I haven't.

As for targeted vs. untargeted, I think I prefer targeted ads, because they are more likely to be somewhat entertaining. But any place that closely tracks my behavior for advertising purposes freaks me out. (amazon.com, I'm looking at you!)

Re:It's a difficult balance

[servognome]

I meant to say there is no rational argument to be made for fashion.

Wouldn't increasing your chances at sex, social promotion, acceptance by others, etc. be rational arguments for fashion? Fashion is basically marketing yourself, with limited facts people will make decisions on you based on your clothing.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[smellotron]

But still, let's look at something like cars then. Marketed to project an emotion because they essentially an emotional purchase. That's what people actually want from their cars. You can't provide much in the way of a full description of features in a 30 second ad, so you focus one or two and explain how that will make someone feel (leather seats make you feel comfortable, high performance makes you excited, hybrid engine makes you feel environmentally conscious), because at the end of the day, you can get the feeling across more quickly than you can make the argument. But then you go to the dealership get a pamphlet that explains all the features of the car and lists things in a point-by-point fashion for people to make their rational choices with.

If that's all there was to marketing, I think a lot of slashdotters would be more accepting of marketing. I'll toss out a few examples of things that actually anger me:

• Ditech commercials that open with, "People are smart." Really? Is Ditech marketing their services because they think people are smart? Because my thought is that if people were smart, less of them would have a use for debt-consolidation services in the first place. Thus, the conclusion I come to is that Ditech knows that people aren't smart, and is thus intentionally lying to viewers to make them feel good. Bullshit.
• Any hygenic product that uses the phrase "essential oils". An essential oil is simply an oil created by the "essence" of some solid material. This is an unfortunate technical term that happens to overlap with the nontechnical meaning, "an oil that I require". In this case, the marketing department is deliberately using technical terms with the expectation that they will have an unrelated emotional impact on viewers.
• Any health-related product that claims it is "clinically proven to help". To help? How much? Who does it apply to? What if some diet drug is clinically proven to help incredibly obese people who begin a strict 3-hours-daily exercise regimen, to reduce their weight an additional 2%? Technically, the marketers are right. It's clinically proven to help... in extreme cases... a tiny amount. But all of the sleazy diet-pill commercials that I see all sound the same, so I (quite possibly erroneously) write them all off because of their inability to convince me of their expected efficacy.
• Transitions lenses commercials. They've always bugged me. I had a pair once, and discovered the suckitude for myself. They take about 15 minutes to go from "dark" to "light". Also, their "dark" scale is nowhere near what is necessary on a very bright day. I notice that the lenses in commercials always looked significantly darker than my lenses ever got. Prescription lenses are particularly difficult for experimentation, so I had to waste my money on them in order to know that they are ineffective outdoors and annoying indoors. But now that damned photographer commercial is showing, and all I can think is, "I would NEVER want inconsistent tint on my lenses if I were a professional photographer. My eyes are too important to depend upon transitions lenses."
• Car commercials that focus entirely on emotions. A car is an emotional purchase? Really? That's an awful lot of money to be spending on emotions. I understand brand recognition, but I'd like for a commercial to actually give me some information about the car, rather than just trying to tell me that I want it. Don't tell me what I should want. Tell me why I should care.

Ok, so we have pandering, abuse of vocabulary, technical omissions, general omission of weaknesses, and noninformation/noise. That all sounds like lying to me, though omission of weakness is probably the most "acceptable".

To be fair, here's some work of marketing that doesn't bother me...

• Commercials for local food services (e.g. late night pizza delivery). They sa

Re:It's a difficult balance

[CamD]

...when it's really just based on bullshit.

Quite literally.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't signing up for Facebook your opt-in?

No signing up to exchange info on what's going on in your life with those you label as your friends is not also signing up to exchange info on what's going on in your life with those you don't label as your friends.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Blkdeath]

Ditech commercials that open with, "People are smart." Really? Is Ditech marketing their services because they think people are smart? Because my thought is that if people were smart, less of them would have a use for debt-consolidation services in the first place.

Sad fact is there are a lot of stupid people out there, and the best subversive way to tell someone they're stupid is to tell them how smart they are. Yes, these ads do target the uneducated or the ill-informed members of our society. By the way; you don't have to be stupid to be bad at financial management. I've dealt with more than my fair share of very smart people in credit crisis.

Any health-related product that claims it is "clinically proven to help". To help? How much? Who does it apply to?

This would be an awareness ad. "Ask your doctor" is often included in them somewhere along with a list of side effects (give me a few minutes and I'll get you the Jeff Foxworthy clip).

Car commercials that focus entirely on emotions. A car is an emotional purchase? Really? That's an awful lot of money to be spending on emotions.

Ayup, it is.

Give a customer a perfectly factual presentation of a car's features, controls, options, economy and safety equipment/ratings and you'll get a blank stare and a brochure request. Show the person how this car will make them look (vanity), feel (happiness), and protect what's important to them (love) and you've got yourself a sale. As the old saying goes, "The feel of the wheel will seal the deal."

The percentage of people who buy purely based on factual data? Probably hovers somewhere in the 1-2% range.

Do you buy your vehicles based on technical data or do you look it around first, spend some time driving (feeling) it out? Do you buy a home based on measurements and number and dimension of windows, or do you look around and envision yourself in the space and get a feeling or vibe about it?

Our emotions are a major, if not the major cause of most of our decisions in life. Show me someone who's never done or specifically avoided something because of a gut feeling and I'll show you a liar.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if your boss started publishing your medical records on the internet, after you'd been working there for years, and his response was "don't like it, don't work here".

The changes in Facebook's privacy features have sometimes been rather drastic, and while the features certainly have their use, they've been foisted upon current users, many times without a way to opt-out initialy.

Current users should have the new features pointed out on login, and defaulted to opt-out... new accounts, sure, they can be defaulted to opt-in, but changing privacy features to current users UNTIL they opt out is... well... bullshit.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually J-list recently ended their advertising agreement with 4chan.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Jeruvy]

...and "Sales" are just another form of advertising. It used to be that retailers would put old stock on sale to eliminate it, but these days it's become it's own way of advertising, after all 'who doesn't like buying stuff on sale?'.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[Jeruvy]

Car commercials that focus entirely on emotions. A car is an emotional purchase? Really? That's an awful lot of money to be spending on emotions.

Give a customer a perfectly factual presentation of a car's features, controls, options, economy and safety equipment/ratings and you'll get a blank stare and a brochure request. Show the person how this car will make them look (vanity), feel (happiness), and protect what's important to them (love) and you've got yourself a sale. As the old saying goes, "The feel of the wheel will seal the deal."

I so think that even the advertisers have decided to not even bother trying to convince you otherwise. Unless it's a Hybrid vehicle (even these...) the stats go out the window opposed to how I look with the vehicle to others. There is even a commercial in our market where a saleswoman is selling a car to a rather average guy and the guy asks 'so, who do I look?' and she points over to the window where a bunch of girls are looking his way smiling and flirting. He says he'll take it. Behind the guy is some famous country singer (don't remember the name) who tips his hat to the saleswoman.

I think this takes all doubt out of the question.

The percentage of people who buy purely based on factual data? Probably hovers somewhere in the 1-2% range.

Do you buy your vehicles based on technical data or do you look it around first, spend some time driving (feeling) it out? Do you buy a home based on measurements and number and dimension of windows, or do you look around and envision yourself in the space and get a feeling or vibe about it?

Our emotions are a major, if not the major cause of most of our decisions in life. Show me someone who's never done or specifically avoided something because of a gut feeling and I'll show you a liar.

All true, but most of these decisions would be affected better without an emotional requirement. Getting back to car examples, the best cars I've had were all cars that I didn't buy because 'I had to have that car!', but because 'It will do what I need it to do'. It's funny but reality. Of course I can also honestly say the cars I had the most fun with were the more emotional ones.

Same with home buying, I don't think I've ever bought a house on the specs, but it certainly reduces the choices I look at, so in a indirect way I will weed down the views to my 'needs', then pick as you stated 'what looks good'. I do think a home/car is much like a suit/dress, and the purchasing and advertising aspects of these purchases will obviously have an emotional attachment I don't think you can eliminate. But we can try to reign it in a bit, and I think avoiding advertising is an effective way to do this. More planning based on real needs vs. the 'window shopping' approach certainly works. But I also think some people cannot be effective consumers this way. I've seen some people that simply cannot resist/avoid impulse purchases. Sure everyone is guilty from time to time but for some it's like food, an essential part of the day.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[jasonjacks0n]

On the one hand, you want to be able to post pictures of yourself passed out in your own vomit, stripped down to your panties and french kissing another sorority sister, and simulating fellatio on a blow up doll. On the other hand, you don't want people to be able to copy the pictures and send them around the web.

No, people don't want Facebook itself to share their pictures, posts and movie ratings for them. They generally understand that their friends may do so, and accept that risk (just as they accept or even welcome the idea that people who were at a party in person with them will gossip about that incident with the lampshade..)

And that's not at all unreasonable. People sign up for social networking sites in order to share photos and stories with their friends & acquaintances, not teh internets at large. Just as your ISP could republish the contents of your emails or your browsing history, or MS could republish every thing you ever type into a Word document, it's reasonable to expect them not to. Why do so many slashdotters think it's not reasonable to expect the same of Facebook?

In fact, Facebook is violating the expectations of users, and is therefore facing blowback from them. While users' expectations may be unrealistic in this case, they are not at all unreasonable. And while most slashdotters would be incensed to find that MS was republishing - or even just tracking - the contents of our Word documents, unless we explicitly opted out for each document, many here seem to think it's just dandy if Facebook does the equivalent, and if Facebook's users don't like it, screw 'em.

Yes, sure, people should read Facebook's TOS more carefully. No argument there. But a general contract of trust has been established over time between users and application/service providers, and Facebook is definitely pushing the line on that; it's Facebook who's in the wrong, even if its users are being a little naive.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[PhxBlue]

In the absence of marketing a wise consumer won't be informed, since they won't know what's out there. Who do you think sends out press releases, review copies, etc.

Are you on crack, or are you just in marketing? All I have to do to "know what's out there" is go to the store and look at what's on the shelves. If I really want to do in-depth research, I can go online and look for information, look up an old copy of Consumer Reports in the library, etc. At no point do I need a press release, an advertisement or a book or movie review to tell me what I do or don't want to purchase.

You make it sound like there's an optimal product out there that all consumers would be best off buying.

Nowhere did the GP say that one product would satisfy everyone's needs. He said "a wise, informed consumer will pick the best option for their needs." Consumers' needs, as you pointed out in your real-life example, vary widely: you buy a mid-range brand of orange juice, whereas I might splurge for the organic or squeeze my own.

Bottom line, though, is this: If the world didn't have marketing departments, people would still do just fine on word of mouth -- just like they did before marketing departments were around.

Re:It's a difficult balance

[jasonjacks0n]

Replying to myself, but from a comment on another recent /. story, I learned that some ISPs may be selling users' browsing habits to advertisers, too:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=482074&cid=22703796

*sigh*

Well, that just confirms my belief that this is an issue we need to fight at the social/legal level, and not rely on technical workarounds for. IOW, our status as the technically adept (and maybe socially less-adept), while it may "protect" us against Facebook now, is not a long-term solution for the issue..

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Too bad...

[Black Parrot]

Too bad the article doesn't tell us what the purportedly clueless interviewer *did* ask.

Re:Too bad...

[millwall]

Too bad the article doesn't tell us what the purportedly clueless interviewer *did* ask.

TFA is a waste of time.

Sensational headline - "Facebook founder heckled at web conference", yet providing no proof for this, nor any proof on why the interviewer was clueless.

A couple of bland quotes from Zuckerberg on the Yahoo bid and privacy issues. Good enough for a /. first page?

Re:Too bad...

[eldavojohn]

Valley Wag does. The twitter feeds are basically asses calling her stupid and what not. She reportedly replied that she hates everyone on the twitter feed. Oh well, another attention whoring soap opera to avoid in my eyes.

Re:Too bad...

[TopShelf]

Good enough for a /. first page?

Well, you're setting the bar pretty low, there...

Re:Too bad...

[Furry Ice]

Here's a video of the interview: http://www.austin360.com/news/mplayer/sxsw/73367

Re:Too bad...

[Angostura]

Actually the comments on that video appear to be the most informative guide to what happened.

Re:Too bad...

[holden caufield]

I just watched the video, and (surprise) this is a non-story. The interview just seems like a couple of 20-somethings who forgot they need to act like adults. The interviewer didn't help herself by poorly phrasing her questions (for example, about Facebook's market cap), and rambling on and on. What was she doing? Jockeying for a job? A date? A loan?

The interviewer just didn't do a good job, and was in front of people who witnessed it. The audience should have been more mature, the interviewer should have been more prepared, and a kid who sold his company for a staggering amount of money should have been more interesting.

Re:Too bad...

[earlymon]

From http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9889528-52.html -

"You have to ask questions," he said.

Again, his line generated a massive cheer from the crowd.

By now, Lacy was becoming aware of how she was losing the crowd, and said, "Anybody who's seen my (TV) show...has seen me throw a whole glass of water on (Techcrunch founder Michael) Arrington."

With a sly look, Zuckerberg grabbed her water glass and moved it out of her reach.

She then tried to follow up the line of questioning about the journals, saying that one of the interesting things about his process was that he burned the journals when he was done with them.

"I don't do that," Zuckerberg said. "You made that up."

Shocked, Lacy called out to the back of the room where someone who had apparently sat and talked with Lacy and Zuckerberg the night before was sitting in an attempt to get confirmation that he had said he burned his journals. Much as I dislike CNET, the above link seems to tell more than most sites, I recommend it, FWIW. In any case, the rage sounds justified.

scrabulous

[apodyopsis]

privacy, shmivacy - what I really want to know is are they going to take our Scrabulous away?

how else am I going to fill the hours spent sitting in front of a computer whilst at work?

Video of Sarah Lacy's version of what happened

[dstone]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ccLJnICdJGI

She's made of Teflon(R), apparently.

Re:Video of Sarah Lacy's version of what happened

[Briden]

While the interviewer doesn't exactly seem like she pegged him to the wall, I would have loved to hear the audiences questions and reactions. If she did worse in the interview, than the in the post mortem, it'd be funny on it's own. I'd have liked to have seen zuckberg's reaction too, I wonder if he ever deletes peoples accounts just for spite. Come on, someone has to have recorded this on a cellphone or something?

Re:Video of Sarah Lacy's version of what happened

[MrMunkey]

Here's a video of the actual interview. I don't think it's the whole thing though.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LxZ6-O5R1zs

Re:Video of Sarah Lacy's version of what happened

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen more journalism in bars between people trying to get into each other's pants. That girl is just plain sad.

Re:Probably set up

[dattaway]

You don't become a billionaire by accident and no billionaire wants to answer those questions.

Get a suit, Zuck!

[davejenkins]

Now that he has a billion dollars, I would hope that Mr Zuckerburg invests in a CEO or COO-- someone over 40 that can at least give the appearance of a "real" company. Yes, I realize that means selling out to a certain degree and it also maybe takes away some (okay most) of the fun, but it also means that certain people (investors) won't think that the staff at facebook is making shit up as they go along.

If I were Mark, I would hire a suit, and put him in front of the crowds, while I stood off to the side and wait for the 'inspirational answer' about the dreamy-dream utopian future and how my software was going to make it happen.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[rindeee]

Ahem. I was a CIO at 26 (not of my own company, either) and a CEO by 30. What's this over 40 nonsense? As for a suit? I would venture a guess that at least a fourth of current CEOs go for the business casual look (I'm a suit/tie guy myself).

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[plague3106]

Huh? Investors are pretty clueless people, and pretty much all companies are "maiking up shit as they go along" to keep investors around.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[insertwackynamehere]

He clearly got this far on his own. Why should he hire someone now?

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[AvitarX]

I be the one (CEO at 30) has something to do with the other (suit and tie) though.

Not to imply your not talented, or event hat perception is everything. Just that perception is something, and something that is probably worth it when you are trying to overvalue your company at such ridiculous levels.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[maxume]

He doesn't have a billion dollars. He surely has several million in actual money, but the rest is paper.

Given that he has several million dollars that probably aren't going anywhere(which is enough money to do whatever you want for the rest of your life), why should he care more about what certain people think than he cares about having fun? So he can make sure that he is worth $2 billion on paper, and then 4?

I can see where it would be more fun to not put up with a bunch of inane questions from bloggers, but that isn't what you said.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[lotho brandybuck]

This has been my experience too. Both as an investor, and as an employee!

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[magarity]

several million dollars that probably aren't going anywhere(which is enough money to do whatever you want for the rest of your life
 
Dream on; at current rates it takes a LOT more than 'several' million to do 'whatever you want for the rest of your life'. Every million is a lousy $20k/year or so in interest income, on which you pay tax. So the whopping sum of even $10M would put you comfortably upper middle class but hardly an out of control rock-n-roller if you wanted to keep it up.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[maxume]

I would think that you would be making a minimum that was more like $30,000 per million, after taxes. It's possible to make 4% (not adjusted for inflation) investing $5000 in the most boring bonds imaginable, so assuming 2% on $1000000 is just silly.

Not the most boring bonds imaginable(but close):

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VBMFX

Yielding 4.86%. Great for tax free investments(Roth IRAs and the like), something with a bigger focus on municipal bonds is better for situations where you pay tax. For a millionaire, something like this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=vwlux&d=t

would be pretty good(minimum investment is $100,000). 4.6% yield, much of that(maybe all of it, check the prospectus) exempt from federal taxes. There are others that provide income that is exempt from state and federal taxes:

http://biz.yahoo.com/p/fam/vanguard.html

Make some of it into an annuity and you could do even better, for a while.

Anyway, someone with 3 or 4 million dollars in the bank can afford to take much bigger risks than someone who *has* to work, which is more what I was talking about when I said 'do whatever you want with your life', not 'live your wildest dreams forever'. I shall endeavor to be more boringly specific in the future.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[bkr1_2k]

You're doing a shitty job of investing if you're only making $20k on $1M. Seriously, that's only 2%. A low end money market investment will earn you at least 3.5% on that kind of money and most will guarantee 4.5 and actually earn around 6. If you actually invest the money in real investments you're looking at something more like 8-10% for conservative investment, which earns you around 80-100k (per million) before taxes, so let's say 70-85K per year after taxes, if you actually pay at 15%. (My wife and I made 100k+ this year and our actual tax percentage is around 11%.)

If you can't survive and "do whatever you want" on 300K+ a year (for "several million") in interest income you're seriously being wasteful with your money. Or you're trying to buy shit that costs millions of dollars, which is generally being wasteful with your money, but agreeably doesn't fall into the category "whatever you want to do".

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[positiveexperience]

Nope, he has a Dillion Bollars, not much not less.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[Kashgarinn]

"I would hope that Mr Zuckerburg invests in a CEO or COO-- someone over 40 that can at least give the appearance of a "real" company."

And I would hope that Mr. Zuckerburg invests in a monkey with a beerbong-- some ape-like creature that can at least give the appearance of a "fun" company.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to subtract 2-3% from each of the interest rates you're using and reinvest it, or your interest income will not keep pace with inflation.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[maxume]

8-10% might be a bit of an aggressive assumption for conservative investments. For the DOW to match last centuries growth in this century, it would have to close at 2,000,000 at the beginning of 2100(page 19, the whole thing is worth a read):

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf

To hit 10% a year, the DOW would close at 24,000,000. One way to look at it is to ask, are things going to improve more this century than they improved last century, or less(the upside is that if they improve more, money will get less and less important, so it will be hard to miss out on).

The whole Malthusian folly comes into play, current projections can't really foresee radical future changes, but I don't think it is self evident that the progress made in the last 100 years will be repeated(especially in terms of things like resource extraction and farming, which saw enormous gains in productivity).

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[adolf]

Who cares?

Honestly, if it were me and my billion dollars of worth and I expected the company to last about five years, I'd just write myself a nice retirement package and plan on doing another 3 or so years of good and solid work. Then, I'd find a moderately palatable CEO corporate-type to run things, and spend the rest of my life pretending that it's still 1999.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[The One and Only]

Now that he has a billion dollars, I would hope that Mr Zuckerburg invests in a CEO or COO-- someone over 40 that can at least give the appearance of a "real" company. Yes, I realize that means selling out to a certain degree and it also maybe takes away some (okay most) of the fun, but it also means that certain people (investors) won't think that the staff at facebook is making shit up as they go along.

That's the obvious solution. A certain 20-something business founder once decided to do the same thing back in the day, hiring a cola executive to be the new CEO. Said cola executive ran the founder out of the company and almost ran the company into the ground.

At this point, the person most experienced as and qualified to be CEO of Facebook is Zuckerburg.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[SwellJoe]

He has hired a suit, just last week. Sheryl Sandberg, former VP of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google (the division that makes 99% of Google's money) and the 29th most powerful woman in the world according to Fortune magazine, will be sharing a cube with Zuckerberg, presumably to provide some adult supervision. She's under 40, but she's got plenty of experience...I've never met her, but I know a half dozen people that worked for her, and all think very highly of her.

It's perhaps the only hire I could imagine Facebook making that would give it a snowball's chance in hell of being worth the 15 billion valuation that the MS investment gave them last year. I still probably wouldn't consider Facebook options very valuable, but the odds of them being valuable definitely just went up.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[bkr1_2k]

No you don't. If you're earning more than inflation every year, and you're not using any of the principle you're never going to have any problem keeping up with the pace of inflation.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[bkr1_2k]

You're probably right about my numbers being slightly aggressive for a "truly conservative" investment. Maybe I should have said a "conservatively balanced" investment. However, the market has historically produced approximately 8% for long term investments over the last 60 years or so, and I have seen no forecasts that predict that is likely to change any time soon.

Yes, the numbers you mention about the DOW seem ridiculous, but I remember when the DOW broke 2000 (in 87, not that long ago) and people thought that was remarkable. The same thing happened at 5,000 and 10,000. There's no reason to think that growth is going to stagnate for any remarkably long period of time. A couple years, sure but not much longer than that if history is any indicator. Is that kind of growth self-evident, no, but there's also no evidence to suggest it will stop either. I choose to invest on the side of optimism, others will choose differently.

Either way, my comment still stands, if you can't "do what you want" with even a measly 6% interest income on multiple millions, you're really unwise with your money considering you're still talking 6 figure incomes just from the interest earned on your multi-million dollar principle.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[maxume]

It's me you are agreeing with regarding income on millions.

Anyway, if by optimism you mean significant equity exposure, I agree with you. If instead you mean basing your investment planning on 8-10% returns being likely, I don't. I'm not arguing that stock markets will do poorly(they will likely continue to be among the highest returning investments), I'm arguing that they aren't going to continue to do as well as they have done for the last 30 years. A big part of what Buffett is saying is that he has profited because he is very good at managing capital, but other people are getting better at it, so the profits are shrinking.

No doubt there are plenty of Microsofts and Googles to come, with return on capital that doesn't relate back to any existing business, but all of the business that is going to come from increasing standards of living around the world is going to be very similar to existing businesses. Another way of saying it is that I don't think that companies like GE and Proctor and Gamble can improve the way that they run their businesses over the next 25 or 50 years as much as they have in the last 25 or 50 years, and that they aren't going to be replaced by better businesses. I think profits will grow, but that profits as a percentage of revenues are going to be relatively flat, and in many cases, decline.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[bkr1_2k]

Interesting, and very likely accurate, but there are plenty of places in the world that don't have the GEs and P&Gs already and have plenty of room to grow and make healthy profits, by gross numbers and by percentages. There are plenty of emerging markets that have yet to be conquered by the behemoths and will likely produce plenty of new behemoths. That's why I amended my statement to be "conservatively balanced" which implies you use the lower profit, more stable companies to offset the more unstable, higher margin investments, which you can reasonably expect, long term, to reap an 8-10% margin from overall. Sure most of your stocks won't continue to make high percentages like that, but there will be those volatile ones that do, and balancing those making 25-30% with those making 3-4% averages very quickly to something more reasonable to predict.

Re:Get a suit, Zuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

If your $1M principal gets $80K interest per year and you spend it all, in 24 years you will still have $1M principal getting $80K interest, but e.g. 24 years of 3% inflation means that $80K will only get you as much stuff as $40K would today. If you want to maintain a standard of living off interest income forever, your principal needs to grow at the same rate as inflation, which means skimming that portion of the interest and reinvesting it.

Re:Probably set up

[winkydink]

Well, be sure and let us know when Zuckerberg actually becomes a billionaire on something other than illiquid paper. I'm sure that the entire exec staff of Webvan were billionaires at one point in time too.

Re:Probably set up

[LordNimon]

That's where journalist integrity comes in. The interviewer is responsible for knowing what questions should be asked. If she isn't allowed to ask those questions, then she should refuse to interview him.

indeed

[Fozzyuw]

Too bad the article doesn't tell us what the purportedly clueless interviewer *did* ask.

That's exactly what I wanted to know, given that it was the title of the article and worthy enough to be the topic of the first couple of paragraphs.

At least slightly better Wired.com article

[\\]

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/sxsw-mark-zucke.html

tag

[sveard]

This should be tagged antisocial, not social.

Sha handles it gracefully

[prostoalex]

Say what you want about American journalists, and their courageous representative Sarah Lacy, she handled the hiccups in the interview gracefully:

seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.

Re:Sha handles it gracefully

[Rob T Firefly]

seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things. I will never again be able to read anything she writes without my mind's ear hearing it in Eric Cartman's voice. Seriously, you guys.

Mating urge

[TheLink]

Many animals willingly engage in potentially risky behaviours to increase their odds of mating.

Fanning out a brightly coloured tail, making loud noises, dancing and many many other things that make them more obvious to potential mates, but at the same time more vulnerable to predators.

Posting pictures of yourself in panties, passed out or french kissing on a "social" website is about the same thing.

Re:Mating urge

[stdarg]

Just being in those situations provides a high enough probability of mating. The pictures are superfluous.

I think you'd have to go with a psychological motive rather than a basic biological motive.

Re:Mating urge

[homer_ca]

That's pretty much it. I always used to keep a low profile online, being careful with my real name. I actually joined Facebook a while ago with an alumni email address, but never used it because I didn't find any friends on it. Then a friend asked me about it and added me. I logged in and a whole bunch of my friends were on it now. I figured what the hell; I can't be a hermit forever. It's great for socializing and keeping up with friends, but you're really putting your whole life online. Don't post incriminating photos or activities, and you'll be fine.

Re:Mating urge

[Blkdeath]

Don't post incriminating photos or activities, and you'll be fine.

Then your friends and family members go and post whatever photos they have lying around and all your diligence is for naught. I request of all my friends and family members that they not take pictures of me specifically because I don't want my life broadcast on Facebook outside of my control.

It's one thing if I want to create a photo album and publish it with specific pictures. It's another entirely for someone to periodically dump their memory card to their profile and start merrily tagging away.

Re:Mating urge

[DuranDuran]

> I request of all my friends and family members that they not take pictures of me specifically because I don't want my life broadcast on Facebook outside of my control.

I understand, but that's a terribly finite attitude. One day you will want to be able to look back on images of yourself. I avoided photos for a while years back. And now there is a big gap in my history where I don't know what I looked like, and can't remember how I felt. Photographs are memories. Don't eschew them just because of Facebook.

Re:Mating urge

[Blkdeath]

I understand, but that's a terribly finite attitude. One day you will want to be able to look back on images of yourself. I avoided photos for a while years back. And now there is a big gap in my history where I don't know what I looked like, and can't remember how I felt. Photographs are memories. Don't eschew them just because of Facebook.

I have memories, but until people can learn to respect others' wishes and not publish photos without express consent I'd sooner have none taken at all. I've never been a particular fan of people shoving cameras in my face but have accepted that some photographs are timely and even a good thing to have. However with Facebook and with people's lackadaisical attitude regarding privacy I'm just not interested in broadcasting my life to anybody with an account.

See, I've been able to readily access the photo albums of friends-of-friends with whom I have no association whatsoever. By extension that means friends-of-my-friends and family have access to their photo albums. Memories are private things and I absolutely detest the public nature of Facebook. Ask yourself how many of your photographs you'd want published on a park bench or a billboard and you'll see why I have the attitude I have.

plan b

[pak9rabid]

When all else fails, kindly remind them that you're the one with billions of dollars, not the audience trolls :).

Who cares about privacy and portability...

[__aaclcg7560]

How to become a young billionaire should've been the topic of the day.

Re:Who cares about privacy and portability...

[pshumate]

1. Be young. 2. ????? 3. Profit! Step 1 is the real problem.

Re:Who cares about privacy and portability...

[TubeSteak]

Who cares about privacy and portability... How to become a young billionaire should've been the topic of the day. 1) If everyone was a billionaire, being a billionaire would be meaningless.
2. Ask any (non-attention whore) movie/music/tv/sports star how important privacy is to them. You'd be rather surprised how much money & effort they have to spend to get the kind of privacy you and I take for granted.

Re:Who cares about privacy and portability...

[__aaclcg7560]

You have to be a billionaire since being a millionaire doesn't mean much these days.

money and reality

[drDugan]

and how is this a surprise?

We live in a society, on the way to be adopted globally, where capitalism is interpreted so narrowly that we have only one linear metric for success: cash.

When you are a billionaire, you can pay for participating in situations where the pitcher tosses you softballs, and if they don't you have enough power to never have to go to bat with them again. Knowing this, the cowardly sheep in the media duly bend over and give deference to rich people. It's not wrong, it just is the way it is when money is the *only* metric we use to evaluate a person's value.

If you have not heard the phrase: "It's just business"

Re:money and reality

[moderatorrater]

We live in a society, on the way to be adopted globally, where capitalism is interpreted so narrowly that we have only one linear metric for success: cash. That's the myth that's being perpetuated by those bending over. For me, my family and friends, it's much more important to be loyal to those around you, spend time together, etc. I could earn a lot more money than I do now, but I'd rather spend my weekends with my wife watching stupid movies and enjoying ourselves before we start raising a family.

People lose sight of the fact that money is nothing more than a means to an end, and if you're living life for anything but happiness, you need to get hit by the clue stick. Being rich doesn't hurt anything, and I wouldn't turn down a billion dollars if someone offered it, but I wouldn't give up my current life for a six-figure salary; it's just not worth it.

Re:money and reality

[bkr1_2k]

Who says you have to? Plenty of people make six figure salaries and work fantastic jobs and have all the balance you have. The only thing you have to do is not accept the alternative (shitty work life in favor of money) and you'll get there eventually, if you want to. Most people don't because they accept that they can't, but it's simply not true. Well, for many people it is true, but it's not pre-ordained or anything.

I have several friends making well into the 6 figures doing fairly routine program management jobs. I make good money in that realm, though I'm far from obscenely paid, and I work 40 hour weeks and have all the time I want for myself. I work as a systems integrator. Granted, we live in a "rich" area of the country and I work in the defense industry right now, but many of my friends do not and they are making more than I am.

I'm in my mid 30s and have a lot of experience relevant to my current position, but more importantly I won't settle for a shitty work life. I have many coworkers making less than me and breaking their backs for it, working 70-80 hour work-weeks, but that's what they've chosen for themselves. If you allow yourself to be treated that way then you will, but if you don't then you'll be in command of setting your own terms, whatever it is you want.

Re:money and reality

[Secret Rabbit]

Money is the *only* metric for sucess?!?! I pity you.

video of the disaster

[etherealG]

http://www.austin360.com/news/mplayer/m/73367

Re:Probably set up

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I don't quite get about Facebook. It seems to be essentially the same thing that's already been done at least twice before (Friendster and MySpace come to mind). Why is it that so many people are going gaga over something that's been shown to follow the site-of-the-moment model before? Not saying that it'll be a failure, just that at some point in the not-too-distant future, Facebook too will become passé.

Re:Probably set up

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

That's where journalist integrity comes in.

I,... I don't understand. Why do you put those two words so close together?

Face what?

[bondjamesbond]

What is this Face thingy site you're talking about, and why should this kid be an alleged billionaire because of it? I think kids should go outside and play as opposed to killing (as in killing) their time on WASTEbook and myWaste. Whatever.

yahoo literati

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literati_(game)

HOWTO: Privacy on Facebook

[rice_burners_suck]

Privacy on Facebook is relatively simple:

• Don't put any personal information into your profile.
• Don't add anyone to your friends whom you don't know personally.
• Don't add any applications and don't give any application permission to run.
• Ignore all "requests" and "invitations."

The only remaining thing is photographs and videos that you or your friends might upload or "tag" you in. I believe you have the choice to confirm the tags, or at least to untag yourself if you prefer not to be named in your friends' photos. I think this particular issue is not that important, because your pictures are probably on the Internet, and on Facebook, whether with or without your name, whether or not you're on Facebook, and you have no control over them anyway. Chances are, that's the case unless you never leave the house.

Re:HOWTO: Privacy on Facebook

[Rob T Firefly]

The only remaining thing is photographs and videos that you or your friends might upload or "tag" you in. I believe you have the choice to confirm the tags, or at least to untag yourself if you prefer not to be named in your friends' photos. Unless like me you chose not to ever get involved with Facebook at all, and you still end up tagged in Facebook users' photos. I personally don't have a problem with it, but I wonder what someone's options would be if they did.

Re:HOWTO: Privacy on Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI; don't block apps willie-nillie there's a limit to the length of the blacklist (~6k), and there are currently over 18000 applications.

Oh boy!

[Chas]

An incorrectly headlined article about a service that doesn't matter to me and which I'll never use. Filled full of irrelevant angst and meaningless conflict.

Glad I'm paying Slashdot to report on this!

Oh wait...I'm not...WHEW!

TWiT and why the Interviewer sucked

[strredwolf]

This is on This Week In Tech #135 in which Robert Scoble reported from South by Southwest (SxSW) about the uproar: Sarah Lacy was playing softball and flirting with Mark Zuckerberg, and the audience as well as Mark was expecting hard though questions. At the right point the audience interrupted, which made Sarah go defensive -- a bad move that made her loose control of the interview.

Jason Calacanis (in the TWiT podcast) then explained that Sarah's been flirting with Mark for a very long time, and these softball questions are very unprofessional of her.

IMO She really needed a wake-up call -- SxSW live isn't print!

Re:TWiT and why the Interviewer sucked

[gnarlyhotep]

What (admittedly little) I've read of her work so far, she doesn't seem that professional in the first place. Comes off more as someone who wanted to be a big journalist, but didn't have the chops for it. The same thinking as with bad software patents, put it on the internet and all of a sudden it's new and worthwhile.

This is part of why the "new media" is not displacing the old tv and print media as quickly as it probably should. Instead of hard-hitting journalists, you get bimbos flirting with their subjects and pitching softball questions.

Re:TWiT and why the Interviewer sucked

[nomadic]

Jason Calacanis (in the TWiT podcast) then explained that Sarah's been flirting with Mark for a very long time, and these softball questions are very unprofessional of her.

A 23-year old billionaire? I'm sure 80% of the women he meets flirt with him.

Drama 2.0 is dull

[lunartik]

Who wants to hear someone talk about "empathy based relationships"? He wasn't talking about the issues you say the crowd wanted, he was talking about marketing terms and explaining what everyone knows, what Facebook is. Basically it was a boring and rude interview subject being interviewed by someone who was pitching boring softballs. The funny thing is that she tried to lead him into a conversation, all the while he is saying "uh, uh huh, umm. Ok Sure." Then he says "you're supposed to ask a question" and all the nerds in the house ROFLOLZ.

Someone sent me a link to a Wired story where someone on Twitter said it was the biggest thing to happen on the internet. It is like a story that parodies itself.

This is my opinion of facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3qPRAAnOg

Re:Probably set up

[rhizome]

That's where journalist integrity comes in. The interviewer is responsible for knowing what questions should be asked. If she isn't allowed to ask those questions, then she should refuse to interview him.

Call me an idealist, but journalistic integrity demands that the reporter follow up answers with questions about those answers. Answers which she could not have known when she started the interview. None of this touches on how an interviewer is supposed to find out what questions they are "allowed" to ask, but that's such a perverse take on journalism that I'd rather just leave it alone.

pimply-faces teens interviewing each other

[peter303]

Just because one of the two was really smart and rich, doesnt mean they have well developed social skills yet. Zuckerberg cratered on 60 Minutes when Leslie started asking hard questions.

NEWS for Nerds?

[Apple Acolyte]

This story, the astrology story, this is news? Come on /., there must be better submissions than these.

Re:Probably set up

[jcnnghm]

Pageviews and revenue. It is widely held that Facebook is profitable, by some accounts, highly. In addition to that, the demographic generating the pageviews is one of the most difficult to reach with conventional marketing, making them highly valuable.

Suckiness and sexism

[oceaniv]

Watching bit and pieces of the interview I have no doubt that she had not prepared for this, was just not a good choice of an interviewer given the audience and a host of other issues... HOWEVER these comments are kind of interesting to keep in mind "After she asked if someone could send her a message later on why she 'sucked so bad', I'm sure I could hear the person at the mic say something like 'it's because you're wearing a dress' I could be mistaken though." "And for those who think that sexist crap doesn't still happen, it does. Unconsciously mostly, but ALL THE TIME in social media. I witnessed Jay Rosen's citizen journalism pal, Leonard Witt, again at the Computation + Journalism Symposium recently at GA Tech, introduce one of the very few women panelists at that particular conference, Ms. Culver from Pownce, by talking throughout the entire introduction time he was allotted ONLY about Twitter... fer chrissake, and barely once mentioning Ms. Culver's own product or work! And the sad part... he never even realized what he was NOT talking about. Shame again." http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/03/10/zuckerberg-interview-what-went-wrong/

Re:Suckiness and sexism

[WillAffleckUW]

Are you sure they didn't say "It's because of your address" instead of "It's because you're wearing a dress"?

For example, maybe her email is populargirl@facebook.com - now that is Flamebait just waiting to get p0wned.

Re:Suckiness and sexism

[Apotsy]

The person who thinks they heard the comment about the dress is almost certainly wrong. From here:

And as the audience members began to ask questions, she said, "Someone send me a message afterward about exactly why I sucked so much."

In response, someone yelled out, "What's your e-mail address?"

And someone else shouted, "Check Twitter."

Revenge of the Nerds (a few simple steps)

[Hubec]

Geeks generally don't like "popular girls". Twitter gave the geek audience a back channel for communication. Now self communicating the audience assumed mob-like properties. The "mob" turned on the "popular girl".

Hacked?

[presidentbeef]

I read the headline several times and still thought it said "hacked" and was confused why the summary didn't seem to mention it. I figured the conference attendees hacked his computer and made his presentation say "All Your Faces Are Belong to Us" or something.

Re:Probably set up

[Joelfabulous]

"That's where journalistic integrity comes in"

Speaking of which, why is the summary pretty much an unabashed, word for word copy and paste of the initial paragraph or two of the article? Isn't that plagiarism or something? Or is it different when it comes to reporting a news story, a la Reuters? Anyone?

Re:McDonald's 100% Beef

[LecheryJesus]

100% Beef my Ass!

McDonald's burgers certainly are 100% Beef - its just that a lot of that beef is actually from the cow's ass (its cheap meat)

I don't fall for their crass bullshit.

I'm sure they wash all the shit off the burgers before they cook them ;)

Its not a troll if its true and its never offtopic if its funny.

LJ

Re:Probably set up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and that exact same demographic has used and then left both Friendster and MySpace. What's to say that they won't leave Facebook when another flavor du jour comes along?

My take on the interview

[Necroman]

I was at the presentation, and rather disappointed as many other people were. I ended up leaving the interview before the "revolt" happened, I just couldn't take anymore of it. As my friend described it "That interview felt like awkward sex."

She kept rambling on and not asking straight-forward questions (they were more statements than questions). Advertising herself and telling her own stories rather than interview the person we were there to hear from. And her response afterwards (seen in one of the youtube links in these comments) is even more appalling. It seems she did no research about the crowd she was interviewing in front of, which caused a huge problem. And to add the comment about how SXSW won't get another big person. Does she realize that last years keynotes were Dan Rather and William Wright (both of with were awesome interviews/presentations). She may be a good writer, but doesn't have a clue how to run a proper live interview.

And not to put all the blame on her, Mark did not help the situation at all. He repeated the same statements over and over, felt like he just kept repeating himself. He also didn't see like the best public speaker (not to say I'm good at it), but he didn't seem ready for what he was thrown into. He could have done some work to steer the presentation in a way that he wanted, but I don't believe he's had enough experience to do this.

Re:My take on the interview

[nomadic]

"That interview felt like awkward sex."

Is there any other kind?

Re:My take on the interview

[Anonymous Coward]

"That interview felt like awkward sex."

You try having sex on stage and not being awkward.

Re:My take on the interview

[burning-toast]

Yes. Yes there is.

Groupthink

[bjtuna]

This little 'story' has been going around for about 24 hours and the root of it, in my opinion, is being obscured: the self-congratulation of a bunch of developers that they were able to chat online (with Twitter) about an event that they were all watching with their own eyes. The tweets took on a life of their own. That's why you keep seeing the same phrase, "train wreck", in all these write-ups. So one journalist did a poor job of interviewing some business owner? If it wasn't for the "live blogging" aspect, it wouldn't be news. And don't even get me started on how fucking rude it was for the audience to start interrupting them. I've seen some other people comment here that Zuckerburg and Lacy are lacking in social skills... sorry, but that doesn't compare to how completely out-of-line the audience members were.

WTF...

[mcmire]

Personally I think this whole fiasco just proves (yet again) that when people are given the chance to speak their mind, they act like total dickwads. Bloggers and Twitterers are no exception. I mean, read some of the twits. Sarah Lacy may have been a terrible interviewer, but that's no reason to throw insults at her... Jesus. You'd think that the same people that twitter are the same people that troll YouTube and shit all over the comments sections...

Re:WTF...

[mgblst]

Yes, it is exactly the right reason to throw insults at her. Maybe you enjoy having to deal with incompetent people all day long, but it gets to some of us after a while. So every now and again we feel the need to respond. From all accounts, Sarah sounded liked an incompetent buffoon.

It's the middle ages

[gelfling]

A friend of mine, an historian, commented that when you leave teenagers in charge what you get is the middle ages. Which is factually correct.

The Facebook generation, essentially a gibbering gaggle of binge drinking ADD retards, are now in charge. In a few more years you can expect another Cultural Revolution that will make 'Idiocracy' look like a documentary.

Re:It's the middle ages

[Fireshadow]

So what you are saying is you look forward to their ability to contribute to your social security fund? I don't mean to troll. I ask you (and others reading this) to consider what they can do to make sure this doesn't happen. For me, hopefully I can help to educate the one younger relative. For others, there's the boy's club or mentoring programs.

Re:It's the middle ages

[bjtuna]

Calm down there skip... the sky is not falling. Some people use Facebook, some don't. Some of those who do are 22-year-old binge drinking jackasses, some aren't. All of those jackasses will grow older, very likely will mature a bit, settle down, get married, have kids, work jobs and otherwise figure things out. Despite the entertainment value of grandiose comments on web forums, it's a little early to predict a forthcoming real-life Idiocracy because Mark Zuckerburg isn't much of a public speaker, or because a bunch of nerds in Thinkgeek t-shirts can't sit still at a conference for 45 minutes because they had laptops and free WiFi.

Re:Probably set up

[crossmr]

Do you work for Fox?

Re:Probably set up

[moosesocks]

It's still a tough call.

Although you certainly wouldn't want to do an interview where you're prohibited from asking potentially incriminating questions, an ethical journalist will also keep the interview on-topic, and not spin off onto unrelated tangents for which the interviewee is completely unprepared.

It'd be like calling up George Bush for an interview about his education policy, and then grilling him about Iraq.*

(*This might not actually be a bad idea)

I'm sick of Facebook and I'm a grouchy troll!

[HazMathew]

Is it me or is anyone else sick of this 'social' site fad? First people 'discovered' AOL and they could have a cool profile. Then it was a Geocities page and ICQ, then MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, Facebook. Aggghhhh! Do I give a shit what mood you're in? NO! Do I care what you did last summer or what your favorite movies are? HELL NO! How many hours do you spend in front of the computer writing shit about yourself to seem special? Like your some deep diamond in the rough that the public has yet to discover. Do I care about the kids from my highschool that I never talked to but suddenly want to be my virtual friend? No! If I did I would have kept in contact with you and not drew a moustache and an arrow through your head in my senior yearbook.

Even if I shut off my computer I still can't get away from it. It's all over the news that Zuckerberg and his Facebook. Wow, what a guy! Am I jealous? Sure, I wish I had a billion dollars on paper.

Great, just what I always wanted. Now I can be social from my dungeon in my mother's basement wearing my dirty undies.

What we really need is more Toshi and his milk, Goatse and hello my future girlfriend.

Current mood: God damn annoyed.

What am I doing tomorrow? Watching as advertisers and the CIA and whoever mines the data you provide for free.

This really got me worked up. I have to go blog about it.

Re:Probably set up

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you work for Fox? Don't we all?

Sarah Lacy speaks

[billmarrs]

Someone talked to Sarah Lacy shortly after:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccLJnICdJGI

No, he gets it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's you who think you're all fabulous and clever using deign to make things pretty and appealing, which generally have no innate value whatsoever. I make web sites for a living too, and I have vowed only to work for independent artists and nonprofits, and not to work for people whose work is not life-affirming. Not much of what I do is marketing, it's just trying to make information clear and aesthetically pleasing. Now, what marketers do - quite a lot of them shall we say - is create lots of artificial demand for... shit. Marketers serve the interests and goals of the rapists of the earth - namely, to rip off everyone and everything for profit. If your day at all consists of asking "how can we make this more appealing?" or "how can we get this out to the right people?" or "how can we generate demand for this?" ... kill yourself now.

Re:Probably set up

[epee1221]

Re: MySpace -- That really seems to be a younger demographic there (i.e. weighted more towards high school as opposed to college and later).
Re: Friendster -- The difference between Friendster and Facebook is that most of the target demographic has heard of Facebook.

you already have them

[someone1234]

Don't opt for using Facebook --> No problems.