Facebook had a big announcement this week regarding a new messaging platform but separate to that, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke for over an hour at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In the in-depth interview with Tim O'Reilly and Federated Media's John Battelle, Zuckerberg was surprisingly laid back (compared to his other previous interviews) and it quickly became clear that he, while eloquently avoiding some questions, was being as open as possible. In fact, he was particularly honest with one particular enquiry.
"I think I've just made so many mistakes in running the company so far," Zuckerberg said. "Basically, any mistake you think you can make I've probably made or will make in the next few years. If anything, the Facebook story is a great story example of how if you are building a product that people love, you can make a lot of mistakes. I just think the lesson to other folks from that is focus on building something that people really like and that's really valuable." He says that at minute 41, during the Q&A session, but we think the whole interview is worth watching:
In the interview, Zuckerberg touched on many different areas, including what it's like to run the third-highest valued Internet company in the US, revealing how more than 50 percent of Facebook's users are active on the site at least once a day, increasing competition with Google, ongoing privacy issues, and his approach to partnering with other companies. He also explained how he motivates the various teams within Facebook, including how taking big risks and failing is encouraged.
Zuckerberg underlined how the gaming industry has changed thanks to Facebook, and social networking in general. He declared that over the next five years, most industries will be rethought to be more social, and will be thus largely disrupted.