<![CDATA[Valleywag: sarah lacy, SXSW]]> http://cache.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/valleywag.com.png <![CDATA[Valleywag: sarah lacy, SXSW]]> http://valleywag.com/tag/sarah lacy/sxsw http://valleywag.com/tag/sarah lacy/sxsw <![CDATA[ Abstruse 3D chart shows just how much engineers dislike Sarah Lacy ]]> When techies get mad, as they did when Sarah Lacy interviewed Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW, they Twitter furiously. When they're still seething later, it seems, they put those Twitters in a spreadsheet and analyze them. Hence, Somewhere Inc. CEO Kee Hinckley's Anatomy of a Mob, which charts the frequency of the top 50 words Twittered over the hour Lacy and Zuckerberg spoke. Hinckley's conclusion: "The Twitter transcript makes it clear that there was an early and constant stream of negative comments flowing from a large number of senders." Lacy has cited live blog coverage as evidence that the mood stayed positive until the last 15 minutes of the interview; Hinckley's analysis — though relying on Twitter — would seem to argue against that. Even so, Hinckley is sympathetic: "She didn't deserve the abuse that was dished out on Twitter, let alone what happened in the auditorium." After the jump, an annotated video showing the Twitter reaction in sync with the interview.

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Valleywag-369238 Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:40:54 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=369238&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Sarah Lacy speaks out about Zuckerberg interview ]]>

Honestly, as painful as it was, I think it's ultimately a net positive for me. All most people hear is the vocal minority. I went to four parties Sunday night, was mobbed, and no one said a bad word. I haven't even gotten a single negative email. No one sees the hundreds of notes that have poured in supporting me, saying they were there and embarrassed, or the messages I've received from other Valley CEOs telling me they enjoyed the keynote and that we all get attacked at some point in our careers. It's just part of the job. Can't take the good without the bad.
Sarah Lacy shares her view on her SXSW Mark Zuckerberg interview. Hold on, let me fix that for you. "I me I I me I me." There, that's better. [I Want Media] ]]>
Valleywag-366967 Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:20:28 PDT Jordan Golson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=366967&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ SXSW bar crawl begins in earnest ]]> AUSTIN, TX — A confession: Between the rain pouring down and the rumors pouring in, I didn't even make it to the Austin Convention Center today for any of SXSW's official programming. A show veteran granted me absolution: "No one makes it to the third day." The third night, however, was not optional. The hot ticket: Facebook's Get.friends party at Pangaea. The Crush party at Six Lounge a half-block down Colorado Street was the chill-out alternative. Scott Kidder and I hopped between the two, snapping pictures all the while. Mazyar "Mazy" Kazerooni of OpenHulu fame joined up for the party tour. At Six, I found myself sandwiched between Sarah Lacy and Julia Allison, SXSW's two controversy magnets. Back at Pangaea, I spotted Dave McClure grooving ecstatically to BT, the electronica artist Facebook evangelist Dave Morin picked for the event. (Don't tell Morin: BT has a MySpace page.) The afterparty? It took so long to get going anywhere that we ended up having it outside on Colorado Street, where Wired's Megan McCarthy administered breathalyzer tests. More photos:

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Valleywag-366240 Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:12:37 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=366240&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ The complete Mark Zuckerberg/Sarah Lacy video ]]> The full, hour-long Mark Zuckerberg SXSW 2008 keynote interview, via AllFacebook.

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Valleywag-366121 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:36:00 PDT Jordan Golson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=366121&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Lesson for Zuckerberg: How to hold a conversation ]]> Admit it: Attractive women intimidate you. So you'd like to blame yesterday's keynote travesty on Sarah Lacy. She talked way too much, it's true. But Zuck's problem is tha he doesn't know how to hold a conversation like a human. He's more like Summer Glau's Terminator in the Sarah Connor Chronicles: He refuses to respond to any sentence during an interview that doesn't start with a who, what, where, when, or why and end with a lilting vocal question mark. Zuck, we're here to help. We know you're too busy to read "How To Master The Art of Conversation." For you, sir, the 100-word version.

  • Say what you think, not what you think others want you to say.
  • Listen carefully to what others are saying.
  • Assume that a speaker is saying what they mean. If it seems unclear, try to find meaning. Give them the respect of hearing what they want you to hear.
  • Demonstrate self-confidence and project a friendly, informed image.
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Valleywag-366122 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:10:20 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=366122&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Why Mark Zuckerberg isn't saying anything ]]> I agree with the popular take on Sarah Lacy's Zuckerberg interview at SXSW to this degree: The audience was revolting. Lacy threw an unbecomingly petulant tantrum on stage. But the Twitter reaction was equally self-indulgent. The debates over her performance obscured the man who should have been under the microscope: Mark Zuckerberg. As a speaker, Facebook's CEO is trying to model himself after Steve Jobs. He's gotten help from Bill Clinton's former speaking coach. But so far, all he's learned is the fine art of saying nothing.

A criticism leveled at Lacy: She didn't ask tough questions. That charge is baseless. Zuckerberg just didn't answer the tough questions she posed. "We're not focused on that," said Zuckerberg in what's becoming his now-standard dodge. Zuckerberg couldn't articulate what Facebook was focused on, except for vague talk of "building a platform." (As panel host Heather Gold proved at a later session with Twitter's Evan Williams, if you ask a startup founder what a platform actually is, you'll never get a meaningful answer.)

A second critique: There was no real news. Lacy did herself no favors by trying to argue that getting Zuckerberg to confirm old revelations, like Yahoo's offer to buy Facebook, constituted a scoop. Facebook à la française? Quelle surprise.

What Zuckerberg needs to learn from his hero: The art of saying something. Jobs keeps his magic alive by only appearing on stage when he has something to announce. Zuckerberg is the boss; he could have held news for this event, or pushed to get products launched in time for him to talk about them.

At his keynote yesterday, Zuckerberg talked a good game about learning to be a CEO, giving up direct oversight of the product in exchange for "setting the tone" for Facebook. He's talking a good game — but under pressure, he reverts to geek form. Later today at SXSW, Zuckerberg is crashing a Facebook developer meetup, where he's going to take questions — the Q&A the audience howled for at the end of Lacy's interview.

Doesn't he have an evangelist to whom he can delegate the mundane task of placating needy Web programmers? He does, but he won't. For Zuckerberg, talking shop comes naturally. Running one is hard.

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Valleywag-365932 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:00:27 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365932&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ More Zuckerberg/Lacy trainwreck footage ]]> I'm not going to defend Sarah Lacy or what Wired dubbed her "unique, friendly style of interviewing." It's only unique in that no one who's any good uses it, because it doesn't work. Nor will I cover for Facebook's overrated PR team, who insisted on and rehearsed this game of softball. I won't apologize for SXSW organizers, who pack the show with Internet microcelebs instead of the most elucidating presenters. No excuses at all for Mark Zuckerberg, a man with no onstage talent who covered it by tossing his interviewer to the wolves. But if you really hated yesterday's big event, Austin attendees, blame yourselves. SXSW only gave you exactly what you wanted: A chance to relive Spring Break and the senior prom, but with you and your self-styled "geek" friends as the popular kids. Let's have Sarah interview Mark! Lesson learned: The prom sucks for the king and queen, too.

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Valleywag-365928 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:38:36 PDT Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365928&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Blogfather Jeff Jarvis on Lacy's Zuckerbomb ]]> Writes Jeff Jarvis, the magazine veteran who turned blogger a few years ago:
When it became obvious that the audience was hostile to her — cheering Zuckerberg when he told her to ask a question — she acted hurt, as if this hour was about her. Worse, she told us how tough her job was. It wasn't tough. It was a privilege and she was blowing it. And at the end, when she said that people should send her an email telling her what went wrong, she was so 1994; she didn't understand that the people in the crowd were already coalescing in Twitter and blogs into an instant consensus. Oh, if only there'd been a back-channel chat projected on the screen beside her. Then, she could have seen.
[BuzzMachine]

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Valleywag-365869 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:50:27 PDT Jordan Golson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365869&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Sarah Lacy's "Lesley Stahl moment" ]]> If you didn't get to experience the Sarah Lacy-Mark Zuckerberg keynote travesty firsthand — or just want to relive it — here's a short clip of the interview. I've cut it down to Lacy's most awkward moment, when Zuckerberg tells her she has to ask him a question before he'll respond. Watch the clip and you'll see that clearly, Lacy should have talked less and listened more. But doesn't Zuck remind you of an android from the future still learning the nuances of human conversation?

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Valleywag-365745 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:53:19 PDT Nicholas Carlson http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365745&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Zuckerberg/Lacy interview video ]]> This clip from SXSW Sunday afternoon goes as far as the point where BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy prods Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with a "Lesley Stahl moment," whatever that is. Zuck's reply, "You have to ask a question," brings down the house. (Video by Austin American-Statesman reporter Omar Gallaga)

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Valleywag-365726 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:36:29 PDT Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365726&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ You guys don't know a brilliant interview when you suffer through one ]]>
I'm still looking for video of the Mark Zuckerberg interview meltdown from SXSW in Austin earlier today. So far I've only got this post-event clip of interviewer Sarah Lacy by Austin American-Statesman journo Omar Gallaga. Pullquote: "A core group of people in the room got so angry that they probably basically ruined South by Southwest for getting people that high-profile again." Also: "A lot of people said they got a lot out of it, and we broke a lot of news, so I feel fine about it as a journalist." Assignment for Owen Thomas: You were there. Please post a bullet list of all the news broken today. (Ed.'s note: Glad to oblige, after the jump.)

  • Facebook now available in French.
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Valleywag-365722 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:43:26 PDT Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365722&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Pro journalists pile on Sarah Lacy ]]> But enough about you Mark"Stop Sarah Lacy before she kills again," pleaded MIT Technology Review editor Jason Pontin from his seat as BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy interviewed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW in Austin. "This interview is remarkably like an uncomfortable date." CNET's Daniel Terdiman posts a gleeful recap of Lacy's hecklers and adds: "From the beginning of her interview with Zuckerberg, she repeatedly interrupted him." Lacy's response: "Screw all you guys."

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Valleywag-365679 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:19:20 PDT Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365679&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ More photos from now-infamous Zuckerberg keynote ]]>

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Valleywag-365678 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:57:34 PDT Scott Kidder http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365678&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Twitterati lashes out at interviewer after Zuckerberg keynote ]]> Kind words are few and far between when it comes to Sarah Lacy's keynote interview with Mark Zuckerberg earlier today at the South by Southwest conference. The dozens and dozens of negative tweets started coming in shortly after the keynote started, and have only gotten harsher since then. Here's a selection:

  • jonnygoldstein: did sarah lacey suck on purpose to make zuckerberg look good by comparison?
  • JoynerEmily: so glad to be out of the zuckerberg keynote.....wow. train wreck. hopefully the afternoon will go better.
  • brendathompson: Lacy's interview w/Zuckerberg truly embarassing (for her) and awkward (for him and for audience).
  • ceonyc: Other potentially better interviewers: The MicroMachines Guy... Helen Keller... My nana (shes 90 and has never used a computer)

Of course, Robert Scoble chimed in, saying "I've never seen such a bad interview of someone on stage here. Totally disappointing."

Lacy herself responded on Twitter, saying "seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things."

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Valleywag-365665 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:05:13 PDT Scott Kidder http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365665&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Mark Zuckerberg SXSW keynote ]]> AUSTIN, TX — 1:53 p.m. Central Time: Facebook PR director Brandee Barker gave me this exclusive scoop: CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who's due to take the stage for his SXSW Interactive keynote in minutes, is not wearing his famous Adidas flip-flops. No Adidas?In other news, Julia Allison just chewed me out and then gave me a granola bar. Daft Punk is playing on the sound system.

2:05 p.m.: Zuckerberg and BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy, who's interviewing him, have taken the stage.

zuckonstage.jpg

2:07 p.m.: Zuckerberg says now that Facebook's available in Spanish, people are using Colombia to organize resistance against guerrilla armies. Wait — does that mean it's actually a tool of oppression?

2:08 p.m.: Facebook is about communicating "efficiently," Zuckerberg keeps saying. Efficient? Does he even use Facebook?

2:09 p.m.: Lacy asks Zuckerberg about terrorism. "Facebook has a relatively large population in London," says Zuckerberg. "Terrorism comes ... from a lack of empathy and understanding. People are growing up, they're relatively poor, they spend a lot of time studying with their imam. At the same time, they'll go out with their friends and drink on Friday nights and try to meet girls. Then they take pictures of themselves with their religious leaders holding guns. There are people who are at a point in their lives, a crossroads, deciding whether they're going to pursue terrorism. And people have told me that Facebook has helped them maintain connections with friends in Europe, in America, and maintain that empathy."

In other news, Zuckerberg's shoe:

zuckshoe.jpg

2:13 p.m.: Lacy recounts the first time she interviewed Zuckerberg. "He's wearing a white T-shirt, and he was so nervous, he was sweating through his shirt," says Lacy. "The first time I inteerviewed Mark, I kept asking broader and broader questions, trying to get him to talk. Finally he said, 'I don't know how to answer that question. It's too broad.' I said, 'Mark, I'm trying to get you to say more than two words.' Mark said, 'That's really hard.' I said, 'Three words.'"

Right after Lacy's tale, Mark said, "What was the question?"

zuckwide.jpg

2:16 p.m.: I think Zuckerberg is talking about how antipoverty activists used Facebook to organize protests at a senator's church, home, and office.

2:18 p.m.:"We're running the business at breakeven," says Zuckerberg.

2:19 p.m.: Sarah Lacy just totally stole Zuckerberg's line. "So you're launching in France tonight," says Lacy. "How'd you get to that before me?" asks Zuckerberg. "Sorry, Brandee," says Lacy. Anyway: Facebook en français, tout de suite. Chouette!

2:23 p.m.: "There's this sense that you have this revenue from Microsoft that's not sustainable," says Lacy. "Are they happy with the deal?"

"I'm very sure that they're very happy with it," says Zuckerberg.

2:24 p.m.: Lacy asks Zuckerberg about his infamous "once every hundred years, media changes" line. "We got a little ahead of ourselves," he says. "We hadn't figured out as much as we thought we had."

2:26 p.m.: "Let's talk about Beacon," says Lacy. "WTF?" Zuckerberg's long answer:

Beacon isn't even a part of our ad team. It's part of our platform team. We think these large social networking sites are going from large monolithic sites like facebook.com ... to social services. A lot of them aren't even things we're building. Some of them are going to be inside facebook.com. An increasing amount of that is going to be outside facebook.com. What we were trying to do with Beacon was taking the first step with letting people take actions on other parts of the Web and feed back into what their friends are doing. It also ties into the ad system, because it can be an endorsement — someone you care about is doing something, that's much more effective.

2:29 p.m.: Lacy makes the apt point — argued earlier in Valleywag — that complaints about News Feed were much larger than Beacon protests, but suggests the larger concern about both features is privacy. Zuckerberg points out that people are much more likely to put their cell phone on Facebook because they're allowed to control which people see it.

2:32 p.m.: Why do I feel a strong urge to take a nap whenever Zuckerberg talks about "platforms" and "ecosystems"? I think he's saying he's trying to reduce application spam with algorithms. Because that worked so well with email, right?

2:34 p.m.: Lacy asks about rumors in the Financial Times that Facebook is talking to the record labels about building an iTunes killer. "What's up with that?" "I don't know," says Zuckerberg, deadpan. He then concedes that Facebook is talking to several companies, but there's "nothing to announce."

2:36 p.m.: "So you're Forbes's youngest billionaire," says Lacy. "We're just not focused on that," says Zuckerberg. Can't he just play a recording of the soundbite? That seems easier. The $15 billion valuation, he says, came about because the company wanted to raise the most money with the least dilution. "High expectations are tough," he concedes. "Having such a focus on money in the business can be tough for us, because it can self-select for people who are interested in that. We don't want people to join the company because they're going to make money very quickly."

2:39 p.m.: Ah, the IPO question. "It's not that we're opposed to going public," says Zuckerberg. "[The $15 billion valuation] throws down the gauntlet" to potential acquirers, observes Lacy. "For certain companies, that's the goal, to go public" or get sold, says Zuckerberg. "Yahoo offered us a billion dollars a few years back. The primary analysis that we were doing wasn't, 'Are we worth $1 billion?' We said, we have a chance to build a platform that fundamentally changes how people connect or communicate. How many times in your life do you have that chance? So we decided to go for it."

2:43 p.m.: "Did you get rid of some people who wanted to [sell to Yahoo]?" asks Lacy. "We made some management changes," says Zuckerberg. Is that a reference to recently departed COO Owen Van Natta? Or former CFO Mike Sheridan, who was replaced by Gideon Yu?

2:45 p.m.: "Let's talk about Sheryl [Sandberg]," says Lacy. "She's been called the token grownup." "We just passed this mark where we have 500 employees," says Zuckerberg. "That's crazy. I feel really lucky to have her."

2:46 p.m.: "How do you think she's going to negotiate that male-dominated environment?" asks Lacy. "She has a great track record of doing that. I don't think that will be an issue," says Zuckerberg. I note that Zuckerberg didn't dispute Lacy's observation.

2:48 p.m.: "Is it hard from you to step back from product management? Because you'd really be working on the product, right?" asks Lacy. (Zuckerberg recently tapped longtime Facebook executive Matt Cohler to run product management.) "CEO is more of a full-time job than I'd admitted," says Zuckerberg. "The CEO sets the tone for the organization. Being CEO is a good way to make sure the company focuses on that — that people keep their eyes on what's important."

2:52 p.m.: "You're a computer guy and you write longhand on paper," observes Lacy, who reveals that Zuckerberg takes notes in bound books. "Fantastic question," quips Zuckerberg, which provokes howls of laughter from the audience. Zuckerberg then takes away Lacy's glass of water, just to be safe.

2:57 p.m.: Audience questions. First one up is your typical privacy-and-sharing paranoiac. "I think the reason we don't have a lot of that stuff yet is that we haven't come up with both controls and good default settings so people don't have to do a lot of work," says Zuckerberg. "Facebook is still relatively constrained as a company. Things take time. We've realized that it's an issue."

3:00 p.m.: "Other than really rough interviews, what are the toughest obstacles Facebook faces?" asks a wiseacre. "Is he making fun of me or of you?" Zuckerberg asks Lacy.

3:02 p.m.: "Do you think Google's pissed that you have so much data trapped on Facebook?" asks an audience member. "They don't get pissed," says Zuckerberg. "They're nice guys." Then he gives some incredibly boring answer about "semi-private" and "semi-public" information. Five-word version: Good luck with that, Google.

Additional Coverage:

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Valleywag-365644 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:00:19 PDT Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365644&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Spring break for Web developers ]]> Hey, wait a second: Why am I the only one working at SXSW? For everyone else in the Valley, the Austin conference is just a sanctioned spring break party. Clearly, I'm an idiot. I just spent three hours snapping photographs at SXSW's Bit 16 opening-night afterparty, without so much as a beer touching my hands. The Scoot Inn, a dingy dive bar east of downtown, hosted the event. I ran into Julia Allison first thing. I heard Kevin Rose was there, too, but I never spotted him. (Curious.) I chatted up Automattic's Matt Mullenweg, and Mashable's Pete Cashmore, as well as Glenda Bautista, Mullenweg's ballsy Bronx belle (pictured here with friends). It was a good time. But the ROI on SXSWi? Hard to spot, if you don't run an Austin bar, restaurant, or convention center.

I took this up with Sarah Lacy, who was on hand — finally, someone else at work! — filming for Yahoo Tech Ticker. I asked her, do people come to SXSW and party because they're too busy when they're home to go out and socialize? "No," laughed Lacy. "They're partying at home, too." There goes that theory. Pictures from the party:

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Valleywag-365593 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:35:56 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=365593&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[ Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear ... ]]> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear Sunday, March 9, at the SXSW Interactive Festival. He'll be interviewed on stage by BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy. [Allfacebook]

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Valleywag-346134 Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:39:49 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=346134&view=rss&microfeed=true