In an an email newsletter yesterday Jason Calacanis, bizarrely referring to himself as Serpico (played by Al Pacino in the 1973 movie) talks about an interaction he had with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference earlier this week.
Calacanis has long been over the top critical of Facebook, even recently referring to Zuckerberg as “an amoral, Asperger’s-like entrepreneur” and says “Zuckerberg is clearly the worst thing that’s happened to our industry since, well, spam.”
So it’s not surprising that he got in Mark’s face again in person. According to Jason, he first asked Mark to play poker with him, and then made comments to Mark as they both watched Steve Jobs on stage:
Steve said the folks at Apple were really concerned that some kid might get attacked–or worse–because someone tracked them with their technology. That could never happen right? Oh wait, Facebook is under assault for just this type of issue in Australia. Details:
While the audience cheered Steve’s position, I turned to Zuckerberg behind me and said: “I hope you’re taking notes.”
Zuck laughed, and Sheryl Sandberg–the adult brought in to keep Facebook and Zuckerberg out of trouble–shot me an aggressive stare from over his shoulder.
Ouch!!!
Then, out of site from Zuckberg, she winked and smiled at me.
Well played Sandberg, well played. In one complicated glance she admonished me for busting on the Golden Child, and then sent me the clear message that she appreciated that I’ve been educating the kid.
…. at least that’s how I read it.
So that’s a pretty serious allegation – that Sheryl Sandberg, the COO and clear no. 2 at Facebook, secretly enjoys seeing Mark criticized over Facebook’s privacy missteps.
Is it true? I asked Sandberg flat out via email. Her response: “absurd.” Plus a few other off the record comments that suggested it was really absurd.
Why the repeated Serpico references (really – he says “I am Serpico.”)? He’s getting pressure from “influential people,” he says, to fall into line and support Facebook. But he’s not going to stand for it:
Walking around the D conference I felt like Serpico. It feels like I crossed the Blue Line, where technology executives don’t get into big public fights that are bad for business. There are a lot of folks who are getting rich selling Facebook shares on SecondMarket today, and there are many more people–including friends of mine–who have a large percentage of their net worth in Facebook shares.
The sad part about the situation is that the person who sent me the email demands has massive influence over the industry, the people I work with. He could buy and sell me many times over. In short, this
power broker could make my life and career in technology miserable.In fact, he could probably get me fired… and he let me know that in so many words.
The thing is, though, that this is good for business. Jason is the master at creating controversy. And controversy is fun, up to a point. But trying to disrupt a management team by suggesting that there’s strife when there really isn’t is crossing a line.
I’ve written recently that media and blogging attacks on Facebook are getting out of hand.
We love to tear apart the people and companies that are trying to do big things. And nothing is bigger in tech right now than what Facebook is trying to accomplish – a restructuring of the Internet around a social architecture. It may be time for us all to step back and realize that we’re witnessing the creation of a massive company, one that touches the lives of half a billion people a month, on the fly.
We’re seeing sausage being made, never a pleasant experience, by a company that is inventing the sausage as they go.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
“Jason McCabe Calacanis was CEO and co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., a network of widely read blogs including Engadget – ranked # 1 by Technorati, Joystiq, Autoblog, and Blogging Baby. Founded in January 2004, Weblogs, Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL in November of 2005. Calacanis maintained editorial supervision over Weblogs, Inc. as a senior vice president of AOL. In June 2006, Calacanis relaunched Netscape, the iconic browser owned by AOL and was named its general manager....
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook, which he started in his college dorm room in 2004 with roomates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the company to Palo Alto, California. Earlier in life, Zuckerberg developed a music recommendation system called...
In March 2008 Sheryl Sandberg was named COO of Facebook, where she manages business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, privacy, and communications. Prior to Facebook, Sheryl was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, where she built and managed the online sales channels for advertising and publishing and operations for consumer products globally. She was also instrumental in launching Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org. Sheryl was previously Chief of Staff for the United...
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
