D6: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook

(05/28/2008)

5:25

The D6 conference is running behind schedule. This session will probably start at about 5:40 PM Pacific Time. Stay tuned.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:25

5:35

[Comment From JohnnyJohnny: ]

wtf

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:35 Johnny

5:36

Indeed. Conference is behind schedule. I estimate start time now at 5:45pm PDT

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:36

5:41

Anyway, Kara is interviewing Thomas Glocer from Thompson Reuters right now. That's not why you're here, so I'm not reporting on it. Zuck and Sandberg are up next, but it will still be a few for minutes.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:41

5:41

*more* minutes, sorry.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:41

5:46

[Comment From KrewellKrewell: ]

While we're waiting, I thought I'd thank you for the live blogging. You're doing a fine job.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:46 Krewell

5:47

Thanks. I can haz peanuts?

I'm waiting too. Sorry to post this early, but I can't unpost it or it will break links.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:47

5:48	Will Facebook announce OpenSocial compatibility today? Yes ( 29% ) Hah, no way ( 71% ) Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:48

5:48

[Comment From KrewellKrewell: ]

hey, don't make me Rickroll you.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:48 Krewell

5:49

[Comment From JonathanJonathan: ]

Hopefully they will announce it.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:49 Jonathan

5:50

If you're just joining us, you've missed.... Nothing. Kara is warpping up the interview of some other dude. Zuckerberg should be coming up in a few (more) minutes.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:50

5:53

Ok, here comes
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:53

5:54

They brought Kara a gift. A Princess Phone. Based on earlier joke that FB is the "Princess phone of this generation"

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:54

5:56

Kara: I once called you (Zuckerberg), "toddler CEO".
Zuckerberg: I just turned 24.
Kara: It was funny. But I shouldn't have done it. Maybe teen CEO

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:56

5:57

Kara: Define Facebook
Z: FB is about helping people share info about themselves. And open up. In a way they are comfortable with

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:57

5:58

K: What differentiates it?
Z: How it's tied together. People share info and parts of themselves. And we have really good privacy settings, and everyone's friends are there.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 5:58

6:00

K: What was your inspiration? It's not a new idea.

Z: This trend of people sharing more information about themselves... it's been around forever. AOL was interesting to me when i was in high school. In my early developing days, I remember hacking things on the AOL platform. A lot of my friends learned programming building things on AOL. And now they're building it on FB.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:00

6:01

K: What was it like when you came to Silicon Valley and were and instant celebrity?

Z: Early on, we launched one college at a time. We wanted to get away from Harvard.

K: Who doesn't?

Z: Harvard was fun. I was only there for 2 years.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:01

6:02

Z: I was in CA, thinking, it'd be great to get out here, maybe build a company. But this wasn't that company. But then at the end of the summer, a bunch of us just ended up staying out here in CA, and Harvard has this policy that you can always come back later. And one semester became two...

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:02

6:02

Kara is softening up Zuck with these personal questions. Are you guys interested in them?

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:02

6:04

Z: When I was at Harvard, there was this class I didn't study for. I got all the images on it, put it on a Web page, and sent it out to the class, and then they added all these comments to it.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:04

6:05

K: Sheryl, you also came out of Harvard...

Sheryl Sandberg: It was working to Larry Summers in the treasury, but it was clear that technology was where things were going.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:05

6:07

Sheryl: At FB, like at Google, every conversation is about the user.

Ina is sitting next to me. She says: "Beacon." Hah.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:07

6:08

Z: Confirming that the business card that says, "I'm the CEO, bitch," was not printed by him, but someone else, as a joke.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:08

6:09

K: Why are you the leader?

Z: The CEO does two things: Sets the vision. Recruits the team.

We're in the middle of executiing on the vision, and we're only 4 years in.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:09

6:10

K: What have you learned in the first few years of CEO, about leadership. What did Beacon teach you?

Z: The thing we had to work out... There are a lot of ways to help people share information about them. You give people control, and they will share more. That's how people are able to open up and communicate.

Beacon was a big mistake for us, but it reinforced this point for us.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:10

6:11

K: Was it a mistake conceptually, or in execution?

Z: It fit into a lot of things we were trying to do, but the UI wasn't what we needed.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:11

6:13

S, on why she left Google for FB: I joined Google when it was about 260 people, but going to something small again was a great opportunity.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:13

6:14

K: Let's talk about the platform. You were the first to open it up to these third party widgets. Talk about the experience, and the pitfalls...

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:14

6:15

Z: We realized that we were never going to be able to build, or even identify, all the apps that we should.... It grew even faster than we expected. There are over 300,000 apps.

We intentionally never built a music app, but within the first days, there were a few, like iLike.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:15

6:17

K: Do they have to become useful? A lot of them seem juvenille, silly, [etc]. They're not Word. What has to happen here to get to daily usage?

Z: There probably are a bunch of apps that are useful in more traditional sense. Like Causes. It does serious good.

And there's this other trend on the Net: Utility doesn't have to big this big thing. It can take place in smaller, more frequent intereactions.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:17

6:18

Z: The trend is towards smaller more frequent updates, that's how people are sharing themselves online.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:18

6:18	Do you consider Facebook "useful"? Yes I do ( 60% ) No ( 40% ) Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:18

6:20

Re advertising...

S: What works online: Demand fulfillment. The larger part of advertisement is demand generation. The hard part is how to capture people's imagination even when they don't know what they are looking for.

Facebook has utility there, since our users are telling what they like and don't.

Do we think we can use what we know to work with users and advertisers to provide users what they want? We think we can.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:20

6:21

S: Example: Ben and Jerry's Free Cone day on Facebook. Within 11 hours, 500,000 people had sent free cones. And the app [of course] told people where the nearest store was. She thinks it generated 10s of million of impressions. It's a unique opportunity to generate brand awareness.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:21

6:23

K: Are you a media company?

Z: We're a technology company

K: Why not a media company?

Z: We're building technology. The focus continues to be on the product and the engineering behind it.

K: If you're chaning the face of advertising, you're going to have to educate customers...

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:23

6:23

S: This is what people have always wanted: You create awareness of your product, you get users engaged, and you try to bring them down the funnel to purchase.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:23

6:24

S: Technology can speed up the interaction between advertisers and users, in ways that are really good for users.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:24

6:25

K: Re the platform, what are you going to change and how are people going to react?

Z: The platform grew so quickly, and people installed so many apps, that the focus on developers became on getting people to instlal apps rather than long-term engagement.

We're moving the system away from this box-based system and more towards engagement where things that users engage with more are the ones that spread through the system.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:25

6:27

K: What's going to be different now as you scale?

S: The company is scaling really quickly, and people want to build great products. We've tightened up and shortened recruiting... The people who earn their right to be on this stage, it's about having a vision and execution.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:27

6:28

K: What are you interested in for the company? Selling to Microsoft for $15B? IPO? I would have been gone way, way back...

Z: The goal of the company is to executive on these things we've talk about. That's the goal.

K: But I have $15B!

Z: How does that help us?

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:28

6:29

K: In terms of Microsoft, what is the relationship?

S: It's good. It was unusual. coming from Google you don't spend a lot of time at MS.

S: You can't go it alone. We're a small company -- 550 people. Partnerships really matter.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:29

6:30

K: And your relationship with Google?

Z: They came over to my house.

K: You made dinner?

Z: I don't have the proper things in my house to make dinner.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:30

6:31

Z: I think it would be good to work with them on some things.

Google is such a big company, and is doing so many things, and working on social stuff.

K: What is your view on opensocial?

Z: We'll have to see how it evolves. It's still getting started. Our platform is focused on helping users share things in different ways.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:31

6:31

No announcment.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:31

6:31

[Comment From TT: ]

Here comes announcement about OpenSocial or not

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:31 T

6:31

[Comment From DanDan: ]

Will you adopt OpenSocial?

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:31 Dan

6:32

K: Where do you imagine youself in five years?

Z: Just hope we're closer to achieving our goals.

K: Could you imagine having another company?

Z: Probably not.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:32

6:32

That's the end of Kara's questions. Now from the audience...

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:32

6:33

Barry Sonnefeld: My daughter has no sense of the nature of privacy. Down the road, are we creating a generation where there will be no sense of fear of government, invasion of privacy? Are we creating a sad, dreary feature for our children?

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:33

6:34

[Comment From TT: ]

Don't blame Facebook for sub-par parenting

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:34 T

6:34

Z: It's the opposite of that. We're building the world where people have the option... Nobody shares with all 70M users. They have smaller networks, and share with them.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:34

6:35

Z: A huge amount of users are tweaking their privacy settings in interesting ways.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:35

6:36

BTW, Barry Sonnenfeld loves gadgets:

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:36

6:37

Q, from a grownup woman: Are you building things for people like me?

Z: What we're building is universal. There will be special apps for different demographics, a lot of them built on The Platform.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:37

6:37

[Comment From DD: ]

How about a generation with no (cyber) property rights. Now that's dreary.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:37 D

6:38

Q: Talk about facebook apps you'd like to see that don't exist today:

Z: Sure! Something for sports {don't we have this?] More for politics, something for religion. An app around sharing info in that way would be a really interesting way to connect and share info

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:38

6:39

[Comment From TT: ]

There are a million sports apps

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:39 T

6:39

YEah, I don't get it.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:39

6:40

[Comment From KevinKevin: ]

I've seen apps for politics and religion too.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:40 Kevin

6:41

Q: Of all these apps that we grant access to our information... what are they doing with it?

S: Some of the data is necessary so they can work. We have really strict policies about storing and transfering the data. We've seen violations, and they get suspended.

If you're a developer, we offer a really unique oppoortunity to build. They have an incentive to play by the rules.

We police them and the communityu polices them, too, trust me.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:41

6:43

Q: Is there a way you can friends, acquaintances, colleagues?

Z: A lot of our job is to make this all manageble. This is why we built News Feed...

K: Also becoming unmanageble...

Z: We're building better tools.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:43

6:46

Last Q: (Tim O'REilly): All of these things you're building are about people pages. At some point doesn't it flip over to a search metaphor?

Z: As the amount of content gets bigger, we have to get better at search.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:46

6:46

And that's the end of the Facebook interview!

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:46

6:46

Thanks again everyone for participating.

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:46

6:47

Tomorrow, I'll be covering some new product launches, probably not liveblogging. Some cool stuff coming though. Watch Webware!

Wednesday May 28, 2008 6:47

6:47

[Comment From TT: ]