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.

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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!

[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!

[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: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

[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: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: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

[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

[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.