Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his first major interview since his company went public and its stock started plunging. He covered hopes that mobile ad revenues will outpace desktop ones, quashed hopes about a Facebook phone and hinted that Facebook might go into search more than has been.
Below is my live blogging from Zuckerberg’s fireside chat with former TechCrunch editor and still TechCrunch Disrupt interviewer Mike Arrington. Be prepared for typos. Zuckerberg talks fast. Really fast. Rather than clean-up this live blogging, I’ve focused my attention on writing three formal pieces out of it. These are:
Below is the raw live blogging.
Zuckerberg’s State Of Facebook In 5 Minutes
Arrington, you’ve lost half your value.
Zuck: “Just get right into it!” he jokes.
Hindsight, asks Arrington, would you do anything different?
The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing … going to continue to do the things to build value over the long term … in the next 3-5 years question everyone will wonder is how well do with mobile.
Six months ago, didn’t run a single ad on mobile. “It’s really easy for people to fundamentally undersestimate” how “fundmanetally good it is” mobile for Facebook.
More seconds per user on mobile, more engagement and more time and “we think we’ll make a lot more money” from mobile time than desktop time.
Arrington interrupts, says wants to unpack all Zuck said as he went so fast (he did).
Facebook’s Mission Is Also Being A Business
When you went public, said meant to build great services not make money. “Wow, you really meant that” Arrington jokes.
“We are a vision driven company” Zuck says, “but you can’t just focus on that.” You have to build a great team and “they also want to make a lot of money” so you need a good platform a good business a way to incentivize.
Advertisers get good ROI working with Facebook.
“Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand” and while he likes mission more they are now focused on both.
Arrington asks about morale after stock drop being down. Zuck yeah it kind of sucks. But people really focus on building something great, “that I’m going to be proud to do that” to show friends and family. That helps with morale. “I want to be at this place because you built that.”
New people coming and those at, the way do compensation is that we do shares, if they are valued less than you thought, “you’re going to get more shares.”
Mobile
Please see our separate post, Zuckerberg: Facebook Mobile Ads To Be More Integrated Into Feed Than On Desktop. Live blogging that post is built on is below:
Arrington: “is mobile a strength or weakness.” Zuck says lots of engagement, “mobile is a lot closer to TV than desktop” in terms of monetization. “were not going to have ads in a separate column, There’s no room. the ads have to be more integratated…. they have to be fundamentally integrated into the product. Bet too much on native HTML 5 than going native with mobile devices. ONe of the biggest mistakes “if not the biggest strategic mistake” to about two years ago to not go native and bet instead on HTML 5. More usage on mobile web site than on iOS and Android apps combined, so mobile web is huge, but you couldn’t be completely on it. Over coming weeks and months lots of cool things mobile will be coming. A lot of same infrastructure built for iOS will translate into a better Android app. “It’ll be ready when it’s ready” On to development, said in two years want to be world class in particular areas, so build a roadmap. So there’s been a lot of rebuilding and retooling as with mobile and in “a bunch of other areas.” Since that began earlier this years, that’s why slow earlier this year on product but it’s going to grow more now going forward. “Now we are a mobile company,” Zuckerberg says.
Does Mark Still Code?
Arrington: “Do you still code.” Zuck: “I code for fun on the side” but not so as not to be a “jerk” he doesn’t code so others have to fix it.
“Does Mark Zuckerberg’s code break” Arrington asks (he’s a really good interviewer). “Yes. Everything I do breaks,” Zuck says, to laughs.
Instagram Stays On Its Own Infrastructure
Talking Instagram now, struggle with how they were growing, how they could grow with it, eventually made sense just to go together. “We have no intention of forcing them to go into our infrastructure’ but will treat them as if they are a preferred Open Graph person.
No Facebook Phone
Please see our separate post, Facebook Phone? “Wrong Strategy” Says Zuckerberg. Live blogging that post is built on is below:
“It’s always been the wrong strategy for us … it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us” about building a phone. Say we built it, you could get 20 million people to use it, “it doesn’t move the needle for us.” “We want to build a systme that is as deeply as possible integrated into every device peopel want to use.” Mobile web, iOS development lets them go deep there and with other apps, they can do deeper on Android, too. “I basically live on my mobile device,” he says about mobile being a priority to Arrington question. “You know the founder’s letter on the S1? I wrote that on my phone.”
Facebook & Search
Next asked about search. Please see our separate post, Zuckerberg On Search: “At Some Point, We’ll Do It” & Be “Uniquely Positioned” For It. Live blogging that post is built on is below:
We do on the order of a billion searches per day, and we’re not even trying. Most is for peopel but some are doing brand searches. “There’s a big opportunity there.” But the opportunity might not be to build a search engines as they’ve traditionally been. Zuckerberg talked of how search engines take in keywords, run “some magic” and produce lists as changing. “Search engines are evolving” to “giving you a set of answers,” Zuckerberg said. From that “Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer a lot of questions people have” what sushi restaurant friends like “Thse are quereies you could poptentially do on Facebook if we built it out .. at some point we’ll do it … we have a team working on search” Ongoing efffort to have peopel really find firneds, nothing specific to announce.
Gaming
Talking games, 235 million play games monthly. Ways to work with developers better on this. People should be building the Open Graph.
Rather Be Underestimated
“For me, it’s not really about fun, it’s about a mission” to question if he’s still having fun. “I would rather be in the cycle where people underestimate us, because I’d rather be underestimated.”
“I htink a bunch of people are” underestimating Faceobok now, he says in response to direct question.
And that’s it. Below are more formal posts off this live blogging. Sorry for the typos.
Postscript – Video is now up of the talk:
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