Why is Facebook on a product launch frenzy? What does Facebook’s founder think of Google? What is Facebook going to do next?
Mark Zuckerberg, the high-profile CEO of Facebook, has placed his company in the limelight recently with a huge wave of product launches.Facebook Places, Facebook Messages and Facebook Groups all launched within the last three months. It also doesn’t hurt that his company is growing like wildfire and is now worth more than eBay.
Mark Zuckerberg is about to be interviewed by Tim O’Reilly and Federated Media’s John Battelle about Facebook, its new products, the CEO’s view on Facebook’s competition with Google, his vision for social media, and much more. Here are our live notes from their conversation:
Live Notes: Mark Zuckerberg
All times are in Pacific Standard Time
5:07 PM: Zuckerberg takes the stage. Battelle brings up Facebook’s new Messages product and wants Zuckerberg to explain what it is. Zuckerberg says, “We didn’t want to build an e-mail product,” (something he has said many times). He then goes into the anecdote about what a high school student told him about e-mail: It’s too slow and formal. He calls Facebook Messages “seamless.”
5:11: E-mail filters have become very good at winnowing out the real junk, but we still get random e-mails from services and utilities. The real way to solve spam is to use your social graph, Zuckerberg says.
5:13: Zuckerberg says photo tagging works much better than facial recognition. With regard to Groups, he says, “Groups is one of our fastest-growing products ever.”
5:15: There’s a discussion about Facebook’s privacy practices. Battelle asks whether it’s his approach to step on toes until people scream then apologize. Zuckerberg talks high-level and doesn’t really address the question.
5:16: The controversy surrounding Gmail and Facebook contact sync is brought up. Zuckerberg says it’s different, Battelle and O’Reilly say it isn’t, and nobody agrees.
5:22: Battelle brings up competition. He says he thinks Facebook looks like it’s at the point for bringing his business model off-site, à la AdSense. Basically, Battelle asks, will Facebook will launch its own version of AdSense? Zuckerberg: “I think we have a lot left to do. Same on the credit side.”
5:24: Zuckerberg: “I think over the next five years, most industries are going to get redesigned around social and people.”
5:25: More than 50% of people use Facebook every day — that’s more than 250 million people.
5:28: Games are the first vertical to be “tipped” to be social.
5:29: Facebook focuses on helping people share. It won’t start businesses in areas of expertise like media, content, or games.
5:33: Battelle: “Do you believe there is just one social graph? … Do you feel that pressure of power?” Zuckerberg started with discussing how the best apps on Facebook went all-in with social on Facebook. Then he says instant personalization wouldn’t have worked a few years ago because it didn’t have critical mass. Zuckerberg says that there can never be “just one” graph. His view is that Facebook makes all of these graphs more interoperable.
5:38: What about the social graphs that would be detrimental to Facebook as a company? Zuckerberg says it’s fine; he doesn’t seem too concerned.
5:41: Zuckerberg is asked about Steve Jobs and Ping. The Facebook CEO responds on social: “Get on the bus.” Either you’re going to have an incumbent that gets social (Zuck says they’re in on it with Ping) or an entrepreneur will take you down.
5:45: Zuckerberg thinks Facebook is in a good place by having a high user-to-engineer ratio.
5:46: An audience member asks what it’s like to be popular and incredibly important/ahead of other entrepreneurs and how that impacts his life. Zuck responds that he’s made a lot of mistakes but it didn’t deter him. You have 100 problems to deal with, but only one or two really matter, he was told by a VC.
5:50: Is education an opportunity for Facebook? Zuckerberg responds that if someone builds a great application, there’s a huge opportunity.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg on Privacy, Google and More [LIVE]
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