This whole Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg interview broohaha is silly. This is the one story that overshadows all else at SXSW? Really?
I watched the interview online and I can’t help but wonder why all the hostility. Actually, I can guess why; I just can’t “appreciate it.” That’s also probably why I’ve never attended SXSW. Too much swearing. Too much drinking. Too much partying. Too much over the top behavior. The Zuckerberg interview was just one piece of it. I watched several other Qik feeds/twitter posts and a pattern was easy to spot. Several had the “I’m brash. I’m cool” feel about them–in and out of presentations. If that’s the way people want to be, fine with me. Obviously I don’t fit in the crowd. In fact, one presenter (can’t recall her name), showed a slide of a business-casual-dressed guy holding a Tablet PC and said, “This is what the industry thinks of us users, but we’re really like this.” And then she showed a slide of another guy that looks like he just spent the evening at an LA club, making an angered gesture at the computer/camera. The room cheered. Yep–I’m the “other” group.
Robert Scoble goes into a detailed analysis of what he thinks went “wrong” with the interview. Most of the points I agree with. The one thing I think he’s wrong on: The money. Scoble argues Lacy was asking too many business-minded questions, such as whether he thinks Facebook is worth $15 billion. Robert didn’t think people cared about that kind of stuff. Come on. That’s why they’re there. Take the money away and the room would have thinned out. A lot. To make my point: Imagine if she’d phrased the question this way, “What about this $15B? Look at all the people that use Facebook. Look at the worldwide attention. Look at this crowd. $15B can’t be all it’s worth, right?” The crowd would have roared in appreciation. Sorry. People are getting drunk over the money or at least the possibility of it.
That’s the way I see it.