Facebook faces off with Charlie Rose

Veteran journalist grills Zuckerberg and Sandberg on the future of Facebook

Monday night, veteran and acclaimed journalist Charlie Rose aired on his show exclusive conversations taped last Thursday in Palo Alto with Facebook’s top executives, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.  The interview first ran on PBS, and can also be watched on CharlieRose.com. 

Rose touched upon a wide array of topics during his taped conversations. In  a nutshell it could have been called ‘Why Facebook rules?'

Here are some of the main topics touched upon:

Let’s deal with privacy issues

Rose, Zuckerberg and Sandberg addressed the fear of many users regarding Facebook privacy issues.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg took offence to the claims that Facebook disregards its users’ privacy and has lax privacy policies. The two top executives pointed out how Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were far more evil than Facebook ever has been with users’ privacy than Facebook.

"Their trust is sacred." Sandber added: "Privacy is the most important thing we do."

Zuckerberg went even further with his claims "If you look at companies, whether it's Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, right, that have search engines and ad networks, they also have a huge amount of information about you. It's just that they're collecting that about you behind your back, really."

‘Well, no. it's because you have more information about everybody than anybody else," Rose replied back. 

Steve Jobs’ and Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg appeared genuinely touched when he talked about the much mentioned Jobs’ quote in Walter Isaacson’s biography

“Yeah. I mean, it's -- and I took it as this amazing compliment. He said, I admire Facebook because you guys don't want to sell out. …I know that's one of the ways in which -- in which we saw eye to eye on kind of what we were trying to do in the world,” Zuckerberg told Rose.

To sell or not to sell Facebook

Rose took advantage of this opening to launch about the possibility of Facebook being acquired.

Rose asks whether Apple ever tried to buy Facebook. While plenty of offers came in the earlier days, "No one even asks anymore," says Sandberg.

It's too big. Nobody can afford you anymore, replied Rose.

Flat out war with Google

When Rose asked  Zuckerberg  about  “flat-out war” for the future of the Silicon Valley among the dominant four companies of the moment (Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple), it was easy to see where the pain spot lays for Zuckerberg.

Google equals competition

 Yes and no. I mean, I think, you know, Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook (with Google+).

Amazon and Apple are allies

But you know, when I look at Amazon and Apple and I see companies who are extremely aligned with us, right. And we have a lot of conversations with people at both companies just trying to figure out ways that we can do more together, and there is just a lot of reception there. I mean, I can’t think of an Apple product or an Amazon product that I look at and it’s like, oh, that’s really – And that’s cool. I mean, we don’t have tablets, though, so we could care less about that.

Facebook and partnerships

One of Facebook’s strength is its deep partnerships with other smaller companies and gamers, such as Zynga, turning them into billion-dollar enterprises. Zuckerberg committed to continuing to do so:

“So, it is true we are focused on this one thing, but because there’s all this other stuff out there, that means that Facebook has evolved as a partnership company … which is very different from the way that Apple or Google or Amazon or Microsoft or any of these folks are, right. I mean, if Apple or Google want to build a product, they typically go build it, right. Whereas if Facebook wants to make it so that, you know, we want to help rethink the way that people listen to music or watch movies. What do we do? We build a platform on top of which people connect, and we enable all these different companies, dozens of companies to plug in, companies that are big companies, companies that are small companies, things that don’t even exist. It’s a really different approach than what all these other companies have.”

And they have no plans to build its own game” It’s too difficult,” said Zuckerberg.

And in a true post-feminism moment, Sheryl Sandberg, claimed that until “until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much.” Further adding, that the glass ceiling refuses to crack completely. “Over the last ten years”, Sandberg tells Rose, “women have stalled out at the top”.

But the last word goes out to Zuckerberg, possibly  indirectly attacking Google,” We only make one product, and we have a whole lot more to do.”

Read the full transcript here

(Main image source:pursuitisT)