Connect the unexpected
DLD09 live
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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook @ DLD09: More than 2 Million users in Germany
dld· dld09· facebook· mark zuckerberg - 0 comments
(all quotes only roughly verbal, video will follow as soon as it is available)
Facebook is trying to make its way into Germany, fighting the almost-monopoly of StudiVZ as a student network.
So it is no surprise that Mark Zuckerberg makes frequent visits to German at the moment and also visits the most prominent media, communication and technology event: the DLD in Munich.Mark is being intervieved by David Kirkpatrick of "Fortune".
David is writing his book on Facebook and has been talking to Mark Zuckerberg several times. It will be called "The Facebook Effect".
Comscore 225 million unique users. Myspace has far less. Is FB in a battle with Myspace?
Mark: We have less users (missed the number, 150+ million accounts). The defining thing for Facebook is that we want to make products that help people share information and make the world more transparent. So people will move to the service that is more efficient. It will be the same with out competitor here.
In order to succeed you have to be the most effective. I was here in German in October and we had 1.2 Million users here at that time. Everyone was asking about the lawsuit. Now we are over 2 million users (breaking news). We ant to make sure to offer Facebook in any language. People can help us to translate in their own language. 20+ languages we have 60+ are in translation. We are spreading all over the world. we are growing like crazy.
It is crazy that it took us the first 10 months to the first million of users but now e add that in one week.
How is the product evolving?
Mark: There is a huge trend online to post huge amounts of smaller pieces of data. First there was movies and blogs, now they post Photos and status updates. They post photo by photo from their phone instead of albums. If it is easier to do more people participate.
[Sounds like FB is attacking Twitter - OG]
In Facebook Connect people can build apps inside Facebook and access them from the outside, there are also mobile apps being developed.
?: What about privacy and the contrast between the US and Europe? Poelpe are more worrdied here.
Mark: We have always been giving users control over their information and privacy. People in Europe care abut this a lot. We enable people to share for example to share your phone number with only the 100 people around you. privacy and control have always been important for us.
?: Can we trust FB to be consistent with its policies and trustworthy with our data and commercial interests.
Mark: People feel that the company could do something bad with the information, but the world is too transparent for that, we would damage our company this way. There are new kinds of infos shared every time, we will add more controls so that you can decide the range of what you share.
We have a lot of people who use the privacy controls. We see good success with that, peple Do have a sense that they can control that. They know that their information is not public but only visible for their peers.
On Facebook you are your real self, you have your own name and this creates a trusted environment that makes peple share more information.?: Even though you can control your own data, but you cannot do anything about photos of you uploaded by others besides untagging.
Mark: The question is: If I share information with you, can you share it with someone else? In FB this is blocked. For example with contact information. Di I have the right to share your phone number with another service or person.
?: The question to whom my photo belongs is not answered. What about someone who was photographed smoking pot. This has been sent to the principal.
Mark: The issue is trust. We cannot police all this. you have to know who your friends are. The other person can post the photo and you can control what is linked from your account.
?: Do people really connect only to people they know - which is your idea about Facebook. Should ppl be more ridgid about friending.
Mark: People should decide what they do. We display the social graph. If I had information that people should not know this did not spread 15 years ago. But now it can spread a lot quicker.
? Can you block people from tagging photos with your name?
Mark: If you don't trust someone block or unfriend them.
About Apps:
iLike and Causes have a big reach. They are metacontainers. There are thousands of different causes maybe soon millions. Connections to your assents on Facebook are a valuable thing. This is different from Page Impressions, it is about longer periods of time.
?: Facebook connect is a fundamentally new environment. It leaves any commercial company with the choice to build a page with connection to FB or build an app inside Facebook.
Mark: We promised to have FB apps outside of Facebook from the beginning. You can get more sharing and use within Facebook, but Connect will also grow. It will be a big focus for us in 2009.
?: Revenue. IS FB affected by the downturn?
Mark: FB is a long term thing. We are still growing long term. we have brand advertising and are working with the top 2/3rd of advertisers and we ware working with advertisers in all countries we spread to: France, GB/London and others. "Downturn" is an understatement, but we keep opening those new channels. We also concentrate on performance and clicks, not only branding. The ad system we launched grew massively.
?: Is your aim a standardized systems, are there going to be multiple platforms?
Mark: It will be distributed, you can see that with Facebook connect. But there is value in standardization. If you look for a name it helps if people are part of one system. If we can build one world wide platform hat is a really valuable system, we are aiming for that.
?: Should Obama use FB for governing, should he continue using FB like during the campaign?
Mark: He communicated very democratically, he has 4 million connections on FB. I imagine there imes where he wants to use that reach. It would be a valuable tool to implement his agenda.
?: People use FB in protest, does this surprise you? Was it intended
Mark: That is great to see. We did never expect to reach this scale. But people want tansparency, so it is not really surprising. It is a more direct connection between people than reading the newspaper.
?: What about Al Qaida using Facebook?
Mark: Transparency is the answer to that. If people want to decide on the future course of their lives while they are in a camp and are using facebook they can get a more global perspective on their lives. If we know what peple are doing it will help us prevent what happens on the other end.
?: Is Facebook a waste of time?
Mark: Efficiency is th e point. People do simple things. Look up a restaurant, share a photos, they can also understand better what goes around them, economy, government, friends.
***
Sidenote: Mark Zuckerberg at the end of his talk shook hands with Ehssan Dariani off stage, Founder and ex-executive at "StudiVZ", Dariani had brought the idea to do a 'German Facebook' from a stay in the US. There is a lawsuit between Facebook and the new owners StudiVZ - Dariani had sold StudiVZ to a mediahouse and left the company shortly afterwards.
January 27, 2009
01:40 PM