The Interview
The most discussed event of SXSW Interactive 2008 was probably the now infamous interview with Business Week’s Sarah Lacy and Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. This was an interview that started with excited geeks dancing in the aisles (seriously) and ended with an audience revolt. I can’t think of another SXSW discussion, panel, gathering, or event that captured so many themes that are at the heart of the changes in media, PR, social networks, tech, Web 2.0, and so on.
Julio Fernandez (with permission)
So what happened? Jeff Jarvis, Brian Solis, and the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss do a great job of breaking it down. Take your pick and you’ll have a pretty good understanding of how the interview unfolded.
My take…
Painful is Better than Boring
I’m completely in the minority, but I think it was a really good interview. Sure, Sarah made many mistakes. Most importantly, she had not done her homework on the audience. This crowd was less interested in Valley gossip, IPOs, and Zuckerberg’s net worth. They wanted news about Facebook APIs, new apps, and the power of social networks. But Lacy’s ease and familiarity with the Facebook founder resulted in getting him a bit off message, meaning we actually learned new things about him and the company. A good interview can be painful and awkward at times but that’s better than just having your assumptions reinforced.
The Twitter Effect
This was a dramatic clash of traditional journalism and Web 2.0’s “power to the people” ethos. A conversation happened on stage and on Twitter. Dozens (hundreds?) of people were deconstructing the interview on Twitter as it awkwardly poked along.
Fast Company’s Bob Scoble Twitter stream:
12:43 p.m. March 9: Zuckerberg is giving lots of PR answers. Lacy is asking too many business questions. (this is about 45 minutes into the interview, if I remember right).
12:47: lacy needs to study guy Kawasaki. His interview of ballmer was 1000 times better
12:53: Twitterer’s hate Lacy.
12:58: Sarah Lacy lost control of the interview because she just isn’t very good. Twitter is going crazy with critiques.
01:00: @markwallace Lacy didn’t do her homework on the audience. This is a geek/designer/creative audience. Not one focused on business.
01:01: They want to hear about APIs and platforms and what Facebook is going to do.
01:01: She is totally getting defensive now, really poor empathy for the audience.
01:02: The audience as getting outright hostile toward Lacy and she basically asked audience to send her a message about why she sucked.
01:04: The audience is asking Zuckerburg better questions than Lacy did. Totally agree with @heiko.
01:06: @techcrunch I know Zuckerberg is no easy interview. But yours was far far far better than Sarah’s.
01:07: @techcrunch she totally lost control of the interview and had no clue how she was coming across. Still doesn’t “I thought it was going well.
There are many legitimate criticisms of Lacy and her almost flirtatious interview style but what really infuriated the audience was that they were excluded and sort of told that they weren’t important. More than one person picked up on the irony that a spotlight on Facebook was breaking its commandment of the importance of openness and interactivity. The “build up” that led to the crowd’s roar of disapproval probably would not have been as intense without the Twitter effect. But did this democratic, Web 2.0 technology turn reasonable people into something resembling a mob?
All Press is…
The PR Director sitting next to me said under her breath, “Good luck getting another interview, Sarah.” She won’t need it. Pre-orders of her book Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 are spiking and she is now a household name. At least in houses that have iPhones and think Digg is something you do online, not in the garden. Business Week is loving this so-called interview disaster. Sarah on her sudden Twitter popularity: ” zomg! before sxsw i had about 300 twitter followers. i have 1,267 now. hope following me isn’t boring for you compared to last weekend!”
Women in Tech
You can’t consider this incident without acknowledging the fact that Sarah Lacy is a serious tech reporter in male-dominated industry. I mistakenly thought women would defend her against an overwhelmingly male backlash. I was wrong. My completely unscientific research shows that women may have been even angrier. Wendy Piersall:
“She also did NO favors for women in tech, working hard to gain visibility and credibility in a male-dominated world. I was embarrassed for her throughout the entire presentation - and left wishing that a nervous, newbie blogger was the one up there interviewing Mark… I think that what I and others are reacting to here are not as much the words they heard (which were bad enough) but also what her body language was saying; which were arguably louder than the words themselves.”
Is this Really News?
During a phone call with my wife I gushed about how incredible it was to observe this meltdown so close to the stage. Something really interesting happened that room, but what exactly? Her pause seemed to say: “So people were unhappy with the interview. Whatever.” To that point, does all of this seem a little indulgent and ridiculous? Yes. But the interview mattered because it reminded us that:
- You should always know your audience
- It will be increasingly important to tap into meta conversations
- Controlling the message is almost impossible
- How important it is for organizations to promote a shared respect between the business and tech sides.
- We may start seeing a “dark” side to social media in terms of fostering a herd mentality
- As Zuckerberg pointed out, people in other countries will use Facebook in different ways. Colombians, for example, have been using the site to demonstrate against rebel armies.
“Some youths in Lebanon spend a lot of time with their imam, or local religious leaders, and a lot of time studying under this person because they believe in that religion and they don’t have other options. But on the side, they will also go out with their friends and get drink and try to meet girls - all the things we think are normal in the west.”
Need more?
- See for yourself: interview video
- Texas State Grad Students sound off
- Lacy speaks (warning: she drops an F-bomb)
- The “Nuclear Disaster” At SXSW Was Nothing More Than A Witch Burning
Cross-posted on www.publicrealm.com
