Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Admits Mistakes

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, 23, has developed a reputation, deserved or not, for being aloof and arrogant. And who can blame him? The Harvard dropout has created one of the fastest-growing and arguably most innovative Internet companies since Google (GOOG). An investment from Microsoft (MSFT) gave it a $15 billion valuation last year.

But at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Tex., Zuckerberg presented a humbler side of himself in his most public confession to date. In a Mar. 9 keynote Q&A session with BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy, Zuckerberg admitted to a series of missteps. In a wide-ranging interview that lasted an hour, Zuckerberg also announced the launch of a French-language version of his social networking site aimed at the 100 million-plus Francophones worldwide.

In the span of four years, Facebook has become the second-largest social networking site after News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace. The company's top challenge now is figuring out a way to make money from its 60 million-plus members worldwide. But Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook's first attempts to turn the site into a financial powerhouse have not turned out as planned.

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-- OR --

Read about how Zuckerberg interviewer Sarah Lacy is getting slammed and slammed some more by bloggers unhappy with her questioning skills. Not that she's going down without a (snippy) fight.

Comments

[dongarb]

08:52 AM on 03/12/2008

He`s a retard. He swiped the idea from his school mates and built it on lousy technology. He`s a visionary? Give me a break, a high school yearbook done on the internet? No-one will ever offer this anti-social bozo a billion again!

[Tyrione]

01:03 AM on 03/11/2008

Speaks volumes for people to think custom PHP code is innovative. Holy crap you people don't even know the technologies to realize how braindead it actually is and not that it is innovative.

What never ceases to be innovative is how much people are so narcissitic that they spend countless hours on a stateless web model with bits n' pieces of stateful connectivity [ see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_server] centered around one's little corner.

The main target audience was first college students and it's becoming clear that the appeal is beginning to wear off.

This latest round of Social Web Networks is akin to the First Round of the Dot com bomb. They don't produce enough aggregate revenue stores to justify the investments, over time.

Look for Facebook to sell out.

[ErnestineBass]

10:15 PM on 03/10/2008

Cripes on a cracker!

First NBC elevates a wet-behind-the-ears schmucka named Zucker to imperial status, and NOW the children of America are being led down the "primrose path" of the internet by somebody named ZuckerBURG?

Will...it...NEVER END???

[jmaroon]

12:06 AM on 03/11/2008

Is this an anti-semitic comment? Really? Will it never end, indeed.

[eej]

07:44 PM on 03/10/2008

MySpace is NewsCorp?

A boycott is in order.

Both websites are destructive at worst and useless at best. They give people the illusion of intimacy but separate them more than ever. They are huge time wasters. People behave badly on the internet in ways they would not, face to face and with no anonymity.

[HatingTheGame]

07:14 AM on 03/11/2008

"People behave badly on the internet in ways they would not, face to face and with no anonymity."

Sort of like Posters on HuffPo...?

LOL

[AfricanusI]

04:39 PM on 03/10/2008

The boy is genuis and it is hard for people to accept that. Leave him alone, he will be fine. After all it is hard to keep ones head down if you instantly realise your dream has catapulted you to cloud 9...
He will be fine over time. I still beleive in him regardless.

[mrcontinental]

04:14 PM on 03/10/2008

At least he hasn't lost billions for his company yet. On the job training, leave the kid alone he be fine.