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: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: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

[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.