Zuckerberg Interview

I was involved in starting the Foursquare conference, a private media conference that takes place each year around this time in NYC. I’m not involved anymore, but I do pay attention to who’s there. This year Mark Zuckerberg and his CFO stole the show, it seems. There is not much press at the event, but this piece in Portfolio.com slipped out. The quotes are worthy of repeating:

First, financing. C.F.O. Gideon Yu told Portfolio.com today that the company is preparing to raise an additional $260 million to close its Series D financing round….

…[Facebook’s ad system] will allow businesses to set up their own Facebook pages and then reach out to real, live users — that is, potential customers — based on the interests they have described in their profiles.

If those interests include not seeing advertising, that is too bad. “There is no opting out of advertising,” Zuckerberg said….””The ads are going to feel like content to a lot of people.”

…Asked why Facebook chose not to participate in Google’s new social networking consortium Open Social, Zuckerberg replied, “Who says we didn’t choose to be a part of it?”

In fact, he added, “We didn’t really find out about it until an hour after it launched.”

And then there’s this vignette:



At one point, Google co-founder Sergey Brin emerged from a side room at the conference, which was held at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, and headed straight for Zuckerberg. Bystanders held their breath, waiting for some kind of showdown.

But like a couple of championship boxers at a pre-fight weigh-in, they didn’t so much as acknowledge one another. Brin just smiled as he walked straight past Zuckerberg, who kept his gaze straight ahead.