Mark Zuckerberg & Sarah Lacey, SXSW, Austin, TX
So, about Zuckerberg. I keep getting asked… Yes, I was there, 5th row, center when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by Sarah Lacey. Yes, it was bad. I think actually being in the audience you could feel the swell and then the explosion. Others have told me that they watched the video and it didn’t seem like a big deal, but I think when you are there in person you hear and see a lot that the video didn’t get. People cursing the interviewer, FaceBook developers talking back to users at the mic, audience members in the back yelling “Talk about something interesting.” All of it lead up to the moment when the crowd erupted and cheered and yelled “YOU SUCK!” at the interviewer.
I think part of the problem was that no one knew who Sarah Lacey was, no one knew she was a journalist with BusinessWeek, no one knew that she knew Mark Zuckerberg and wrote a book about him. They just saw her pimping her book and telling personal stories about Zucks and were like “who the hell is this lady?” 2 minutes of intro in the beginning could have solved some of that. Of course it didn’t help that she also seemed really flirty and cut him off a lot and didn’t really ask questions as much as make statements a bunch of times. Also, Zuckerberg isn’t known for talking a lot or being a good interview. In the end it was the perfect storm.
In six panels, this is pretty much what happened:
