Facebook, Zuckerberg, 60 Minutes
January 14th, 2008 | by Jason Alba |If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Last night I got to see the short feature about Facebook on 60 Minutes. I wonder how many “older” people created accounts just because of the interview. I found a few things to be very interesting, even though a lot of people are apparently saying they haven’t learned anything.
With regard to “I didn’t learn anything new,” I agree with Charlene Li, who was one of the experts interviewed:
Come on — how many of you honestly expected that Facebook (who are notoriously not forthcoming) going to say something new and interesting on 60 Minutes?
With regard to the CxO expert (sorry, I don’t remember her name) talking about the mistakes with Beacon, saying that Beacon was the mistake, not owning up to it was another, etc. etc., I don’t know. Of course Beacon was a mistake, but I’m sitting in this guys shoes thinking about how I would have done it differently. Mistakes are inevitable, and it’s easy to point them out. Maybe he should have gotten a focus group, or reached out to his network to see what they thought before he did it, but he made a judgment call. It was a bad call, but hey, he threw some mud on the wall to see what would stick. Not only did it not sticky, it was very noisy. And harmful.
And he should have handled it differently. Probably next time, he will.
What would a more experienced CEO done? I don’t know, I bet the more experienced CEO would have sat on anything like that (not the bad part, but the leading edge part) and not ever done it.
This is a very fast-paced environment, and mistakes are bound to happen. Kudos to Charlene Li for pointing out the idea that this is not an age issue, it’s an experience issue.
Do you think Zuckerberg, or any other millenial, would like to go somewhere else and pay their dues just so they can learn how to be a stodgy CEO?
Doubtful. He’s got the reigns, he’s in the fishbowl, and no matter what he does, he’ll get criticism from all angles.
I’m not saying Beacon was a good idea, although there is logic behind it (the privacy/opt-in aspect should have been done differently). But man, lay off Zuckerberg… again, props to Charlene for this:
but remember, he also greenlighted Facebook Platform which has arguably reshaped the entire way we think about this space. That type of vision is what Facebook needs right now, especially if they want to take on much larger, aggressive players like Google.
Doesn’t Jack Welsh talk about the value of making mistakes, as opposed to playing it safe? Playing it safe meant that other seasoned CEO’s of other social networks missed the boat on the a platform like the “Facebook Platform.”
Finally, TechCrunch ends their post mentioning Zuckerberg being robotic. This is the first time I’ve seen him present anything, although I saw some slides of him walking on stage pointing to a powerpoint. I didn’t see an Al Gore robot as much as someone who was trying to be very guarded in what he said or didn’t say, knowing that the interview could probably get twisted any way the producer wanted it, and hoping that he wasn’t slammed and have his comments taken out of context.
Robotic? Perhaps. My question is, how does he do in strategy meetings. And, does his team respect him?
If I were to advise Zuckerberg on management, I would advise him to ensure his management team was stacked. I’m guessing the VCs already advised that.
The real power of Facebook isn’t in the good or bad of the interview. The power was shown when Lesley Stahl was all excited about finding the long lost friend. Isn’t that the promise of the social network? Facebook delivered beautifully on that.
BTW, Lesley, I’d be happy to do an interview with you about JibberJobber :p
Want more? Silicon Alley Insider and Kara at All Things Digital also posted on this… make sure to read the comments!
3 Responses to “Facebook, Zuckerberg, 60 Minutes”
By Robert Merrill on Jan 15, 2008 | Reply
The problem I have with Zuckerberg is NOT that he made Beacon, and NOT that it was a dumb mistake to openly take people’s privacy away without asking.
My problem with Zuckerberg is that he is one of the FACES of WEB 2.0 and he doesn’t seem to know how to be transparent about messing up.
We *all* make mistakes. That’s life.
As a recruiter, when I see a “perfect” resume, I have learned that the person is probably LYING to me because you can’t go 15 years in this world without SOMETHING you didn’t plan on happening to you — it’s flat-out impossible.
What Zuckerberg needs to learn is the Art and Science of the apology.
Noting that same website, you will find the complete anthology of Bill Clinton’s apologies, plus David Neeleman’s Jet Blue apology which, while the media attention was INCREDIBLE and ENORMOUS and even DAMNING, Neeleman made it almost go away as quick as it came up — and the author of the Perfect Apology website claims it was “as close as one can get to crafting the perfect business apology.”
WE don’t want you to be PERFECT, Mark. We want you to say you’re sorry.
We’re busy people. That’s all we ask of you. We would rather you get this over with so we can all move on with our lives and continue using your tool.
By jessestay on Jan 16, 2008 | Reply
Those are great points Robert. I think Zuckerberg’s problems tend to fall in the experience arena, not necessarily the age arena. Hopefully, he’s learning from all this, and will get better as the company grows.