December 20, 2006
Posted by Sam Jackson
Mark Zuckerberg is coming to town (literally) : submit questions for me to ask him
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is coming to my school to give an assembly on January 26th. This is because he was an alum, '02. Phillips Exeter Academy is running some year-long assembly series for the 75th anniversary of the Harkness method at Exeter--the discussion-based teaching around a table that was made possible through the money of Rockefeller chum Edward S. Harkness. You can be sure I'll be asking hard questions.
If this is part of the Harkness 75th series, which I expect it is, there will also be an hour long talk afterwards. The assembly will offer me maybe one opportunity to ask a tough question whose straight answer would embarrass Zuckerberg in front of the school. More realistically any question-answering would be done with the night-time talk. I'm specifically looking for questions about privacy, something that many of my peers sometimes worry about. All the same there are lots of avenues here for lots of fun.
If you have any questions you think I should try to ask, please share them! Post them in the comments.
(Sidenote: Unlike everyone else in the world, I'd like to acknowledge that though it's his baby, Zuckerberg had a lot of help in time and money and wasn't some genius Zarathustra. All the same he's got the reins right now and is the frontman whenever it comes to making absurd gestures like wearing flipflops to business functions and hugely overvaluing his company while snubbing potential partners and throwing paper billions down the drain.)
I'm currently a rising senior at Yale University and I've been blogging about college admissions and higher education marketing trends since I began my college application process in 2005. I now also write about my experience here at Yale.
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7 Comments
December 30, 2006
Ok, this may be just a tad obnoxious, but it's completely true:
"Mark Zuckerberg, why ARE you such a ridiculous douche?
Oh... and thanks for facebook."
~Robert
January 2, 2007
I think a little more tact is called for, Robert, but I appreciate the spirit of your suggestion
January 6, 2007
How about, hmmm...
"Mark, all the negative feedback after the Facebook feeds bomb could have been prevented if Facebook had done more work in the planning stage to test the feature with users. Have you changed your planning strategy since then? Just how much does user testing play a part in development at Facebook?
Question submitted by Christian Montoya, christianmontoya.net, who happens to be graduating in May and would love to speak personally with you about potential employment opportunities."
OK, you can leave out the second half
January 7, 2007
Wow! How exciting to have the man himself back again.
Here's a question I hope someone asks...how long will it be until all of my personal info is openly sold to the highest bidder?
Oh wait...been there, done that...Microsoft is taking care of that for them...
I guess I'll have to second what Robert said...ask him why he is such a douchebag. I have tons of friends that can't wait to know the answer.
Out of all of the Web 2.0 crowd, I think we can all agree that Mark is the doucest. Why couldn't Chad from YouTube have gone to your school?
January 7, 2007
If I am going to ask him that, I will have to try to time it until the very end, because otherwise he probably won't answer any of my other questions afterwards. Tricky.
I didn't realize there was quite such a level of Zuckerberg hate here... maybe he was held up in Palo Alto by an end user instead of a random criminal.
June 9, 2010
I was thinking about Facebook a lot lately since I'm interning for a PR agency as a Digital Influence intern. A strategist posted an open question asking what Facebook is on the company's blog, and I wrote a mini sort-of Foucauldian rant in response that somewhat relates to your very, very thoughtful post: Facebook pushes boundaries for the world/ people to become more open. It is a place where we partake in imagining our futures and a new technological tool that produces a certain kind of future. It pushes us so often that it is always place of contention, but somehow people seem to give in more and more. Do we still remember how Facebook looks like when it first came out? The changes it makes are quickly incorporated into our lives. Its increasing functionality also makes us rely on it more -- from remembering our friends' birthdays to finding out about the latest deal at a restaurant. The whole Facebook package -- its functionality, its vision, etc. -- permeates every aspect of our lives. We are not always aware of what Facebook does, how it affects our lives and how it is so integrated into our lives. We joke about stalking people all the time, but we aren't always aware of what this kind of surveillance does to us. When we talk about privacy on Facebook, we often just focus on how others can watch our every move, but I think the real danger of the power that Facebook has is how we begin to subconsciously censor ourselves and self-monitor. Would that hinder our creativity or make us conform to certain social ideas without us really knowing? Or are we actually being more open, sharing more and building off of each others ideas?
June 10, 2010
Excellent thoughts, Serena, thanks for sharing. Was there more? Zuckerberg's response (better now than in 2007, but still...) would be that more sharing is better, more transparency is better, for you, for society, etc, and that anyone who feels inclined to self-censor shouldn't have been trying to be 'fake' in the first place.
However, I think all of your fears are valid and true, despite what FB might say.
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