Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his new COO Sheryl Sandberg fielded questions from Kara Swisher at the D6 conference. The pair stayed on message. Zuckerberg has learned to simply state the company goals in answer to almost any question. It shows focus and the savvy of a budding politician. Sandberg brought serious chops to the monetization and marketing discussion.
Kara asked Zuckerberg why he chose to be the CEO, even as the company has grown to 550 people. He sidestepped the question and talked about the company goals--helping people share information, building products, and creating teams.
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg
(Credit: Dan Farber)Zuckerberg offered up that the Beacon advertising program was a big mistake, but it reinforced the point that Facebook needs to give people complete control of their information. In other words, Facebook takes privacy seriously.
Sandberg talked about value in Facebook applications, including those that are whimsical and fun, such as Slide's SuperPoke. Kara asked how Facebook will change the advertising paradigm in the context of those applications. "The larger part of advertising is in demand creation and traditional brand advertising. Facebook has a really unique opportunity to fulfill that message. Users tell us what they like and what they do, and it provides us an opportunity to work with advertisers to provide things that are great for users. We think we can offer real users engagement."
Zuckerberg thinks of Facebook as a technology company, while Sandberg described Facebook as a media company that connects people and advertisers. The ended up connecting their viewpoints. "Technology can speed up the interaction between advertisers and users, and that's really good for users," Sandberg said. Making privacy and advertising work harmoniously will be a major challenge for the CEO and COO.
Zuckerberg talked about changes to the Facebook platform, especially getting rid of the box mentality--user pages littered with applications in boxes on pages. The net effect of the new Facebook platform is that the more engaging applications and those that users trust more will get more distribution, through feeds instead of boxes, he said.
Kara saved the Microsoft question for last. She asked Zuckerberg if he would sell Facebook to Microsoft for $15 billion. "The goal of the company is to execute on the things we talked about before, become more open, and share more information. The end goal isn't to sell the company or IPO. We evaluate how it will help us along the way," Zuckerberg said. Can they sell company without you?, Kara asked. "I don't think so," Zuckerberg responded. Facebook's VCs may have a different view on Zuckerberg's view on exit strategies, but it is refreshing to talk about building value.
Sandberg, who recently made her first visit to Microsoft, said the two companies had a good partnership. "No company can go it alone. We are a small company with 550 people, four years old and not very big," she said.
D6 co-host Kara Swisher and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
(Credit: Dan Farber)Zuckerberg told of Google's Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt coming to his apartment for dinner. He didn't have the proper things to make dinner or enough chairs for his guests to sit. Kara asked him about working with Google. He danced around this question.
"They do a lot of interesting things. It would be good to work with them on something. The thing is Google is such a big company and doing so many things. They are also working social stuff. It would be good to talk to them about some stuff." In other words, we aren't really working with them. However, with all the Google refugees at Facebook, that could change.
Regarding the controversy with Google's Open Social initiative, Zuckerberg said that Facebook is watching how it evolves. "It's really just getting started," he said.
Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.
My former teammate and now editor in chief of ZDNet, Larry Dignan, and I continue our weekly podcast (formerly called "Between the Lines") covering the top headlines of the week. This week on "EIC Squared," we two square editor in chiefs discuss the iPhone's quest to seduce business users, some of the highlights from Microsoft's Mix '08 conference, and Facebook's new chief operating officer.
The crew at Facebook has done well to amass a huge war chest (Microsoft's $240 million investment), 66 million members, 200,000 developers, 16,000 applications, 500 employees and somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in revenue for last year.
With the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg as COO, the odds just increased for Facebook to survive its adolescence (more on Techmeme).
Sandberg is 15 years senior to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. She has been through the gauntlet, working in the Clinton administration and then at Google for six years, starting when the company had less than 300 people. Since Owen Van Natta, who held job titles including COO and chief revenue officer, left the company Zuckerberg has been searching for an experienced manager who would fit into the culture and lead the next wave of business growth.
The Google and Facebook cultures are not dissimilar--both are engineering driven. But Sandberg brings high-level sales and marketing expertise into the company at a time when growth in revenue needs to start catching up to the growth in members and applications. She has been through the hypergrowth and going public phases at Google, which is great training for getting Facebook on the same trajectory. She should also help Facebook avoid disasters like the Facebook Beacon program.
Mark Zuckerberg and his new No. 2 Sheryl Sandberg
(Credit: Dan Farber)In the PR release, Zuckerberg said, "She has just about the most relevant industry experience for Facebook, especially since we need to scale our operations and scale them globally. And we also share the same values."
Sandberg could have easily slowed down with her megamillions in Google stock. But the opportunity to take Facebook into the stratosphere was apparently too appealing.
In an interview with CNET News' Caroline McCarthy asked Zuckerberg about how Sandberg's role will differ from Van Natta's:Well, they were different roles. Owen, as chief revenue officer, was mostly focused on direct sales, which is what we have now, and business development. He was just focused in different areas. I wouldn't view this as really a replacement there, as other people have characterized it. Owen was doing that role, and he wanted to be a CEO, and I think Owen did great work here and I'm supporting him in doing that. With bringing in a COO, we just decided it was the right time for him to go and do that. Sheryl's role is going to be managing sales and business development but also a handful of other things.
So there's going to be all the different sales channels, direct and inside and online sales, and human resources, and marketing, communications and public policy...Sheryl will be in charge of all these different operations, and our consumer operations, the user operations group. It's a large organization for someone to oversee, and she's going to be primarily responsible for scaling that organization and scaling those operations.
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