Zuckerberg Plays Coy at Web 2.0

Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

facebooklogo.gifI’m at the Web 2.0 conference for the next few days. First up to the stage today was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He neither confirmed nor denied any of the recent rumors about Facebook taking a big investment stake. He was just coy. Here are some highlights from the Q&A:

Q: “How’s the financing going?”

Zuckerberg: “It’s going well. We’re almost wrapped up.”

Q: “Are you selling yourself short at $15 billion?”

Zuckerberg: “We’ll see.”

Q: How’s the [advertising] deal with Microsoft going?

M: “I think we’re both happy.”

Q: “Do you want to build an advertising platform for Facebook, as well as a syndicated version of that?”

Zuckerberg: “You know, we are just getting started. In three months will be a better time to talk about that.”

Q: “In this culture it is said when you take money, at some point you’ve got to bring in a grown-up to run the company. Can you comment on that?”

Zuckerberg: “There is nothing to comment on. . . . The way we have thought about that is just developing a really good team.”

Zuckerberg has already mastered the technique of saying nothing, while still hinting at the endless possibilities before him.

Update: Here’s a video of the entire interview:

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