Facebook Flashback: The Original Zuckerberg Interview

The Short Version:
Thought Mark Zuckerberg said nothing of consequence during his 60 Minutes interview - it doesn't matter because his October '05 interview at Stanford with Jim Breyer of Accel Partners says more about the state of Facebook today and its vision for becoming a social utility (in a time where it was a glorified directory for college students) than you thought possible. Whoever said Mark Zuckerberg lacks vision clearly hasn't heard this.

The Big One:

We learned several new things from Mark Zuckerberg's big network TV debut on 60 Minutes last Sunday; namely that he still sleeps on a mattress on the floor of his apartment, plays Scrabulous with his grandparents, spends 50% of his time on "business operation type stuff" (which presumptively means he still spends some time working on the codebase - respect, Zuck).

However, all the way back in October '05, a 21-year old Zuckerberg gave a fantastic interview at Stanford about TheFacebook (brings me back) for a series on technology entrepreneurship. Unlike the 60 Minutes interview, which seemed more about explaining Facebook to everyone not on it (the opening explanation was perhaps the most accurate portrayal of Facebook I've heard from one of the networks), Zuckerberg's Stanford interview gives incredible insight into the vision, operation, and culture of Facebook. What's truly impressive is that Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook two years ago is what it has m

To set the stage, TheFacebook had just expanded from colleges to high schools, was in the process of rolling out its photos application (yes, Zuckerberg referred to it as an "application", as in something built on top of Facebook). It had just reached the major milestone of 5 million registered users (for reference, there are over 61 million active users at present). There was no Facebook Feed, no Facebook Applications, and almost no adults.

While Zuckerberg begins the interview referring to Facebook like directory for students, he soon lays out his vision of Facebook as a social utility and platform open to all comers.

As for corporate culture, Facebook is clearly determined to be a social company. Taking a jab at Google's 20% time policy, Zuckerberg said that he had his employees socialize instead. They didn't necessarily have to be the best of friends, but Zuckerberg thought it integral that everyone at Facebook didn't become so consumed by the minutiae of building this "social utility" that they forgot how people genuinely socialize, and lose sight of how people would use and react to the final product.

When I got the opportunity to speak with Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer, Chris Kelly, several months ago, I complemented him on ultimately coming up on the right side of user privacy in just about every circumstance to that point (this was before the Beacon debacle), and noted that it was the userbase that ultimately embraced and championed many of Facebook's more controversial changes, including the opening of Facebook to all registrants and the introduction of the Feed. Kelly's response was that in every privacy-related decision, their criteria was always "is this good with respect to how our users actually use the site" (paraphrased). It's easy to lose sight of how a product will eventually be used, but at Facebook, keeping that in mind and facilitating social communication seems to be a part of the company's DNA.

Many of the details mentioned in passing included several not-so-veiled hints at Facebook Platform (mentioned opening development on Facebok saying: "think of if you've taken Operating Systems classes or that sort of thing (confirm)" and his reference to Photos as an "application", which may indicate that it wasn't substantially rewritten to run on the publicly available system) hints as to the development of the feed (aggregation of changes, and designing ways to find the most relevant information from the people most relevant to you, an early program he wrote that aggregated people's AIM status over time).

Other fun tidbits Zuck discussed were systems to compute the "realness" of any given user, based on usage patterns which they could determine after about 20 pageviews (at the time), and an internal toy they built that could compute with 1/3 accuracy, based on two people's profile information if they were in a relationship, whether they would still be in that relationship one week later.

Can we glean what's next for Facebook from this interview - probably not, as most of what Zuckerberg said has come to fruition, but it does paint a broader picture of the inner workings of Facebook and of Zuckerberg's vision for he company. If what we're seeing emerge now is what Zuckerberg was thinking of over two years ago, I'm excited to see what he's thinking about now.