Mark Zuckerberg on CBS’s 60 Minutes

Facebook CEO

Interviewee: Mark Zuckerberg
Interviewer: Leslie Stahl
Date: 13 June 2008

Are you on Facebook yet? If you’re like millions of people around the world, you keep in daily contact with your friends and family with this online community, a free website supplemented by dozens of ingenious applications.

The “face behind Facebook” is Mark Zuckerberg, who launched the company from his Harvard dorm room. However, Facebook was not Mark Zuckerberg’s first technical success. Before he attended college, he built a music player called Synapse that Microsoft and AOL tried to buy. Both companies wanted him to work for them, but Mark Zuckerberg opted to attend Harvard instead.

Mark Zuckerberg never did finish college, but his little application took off and became a worldwide phenomena. Facebook first caught fire at Ivy League colleges, Boston area schools, and then later corporations. In September 2006, Facebook was open to anyone over the age of 13 with an valid email account. There was no turning back from there.

Mark Zuckerber’s Facebook company received its first major cash infusion from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Facebook started receiving major investments from venture capitalists, though it initially was losing money.

Rumors that Mark Zuckerberg would sell Facebook began flying around. BusinessWeek even reported that an unnamed buyer offered $750 million for the site. Then Yahoo! began negotiations, with the price reportedly going up to a billion. Microsoft also offered $500 million for a 5% stake in the company. Incredibly, Mark Zuckerberg turn down all these offers.

“We’re not really looking to sell the company,” Mark Zuckerberg said. “We’re not looking to IPO anytime soon. It’s just not the core focus of the company.”

Microsoft eventually did convince Mark Zuckerberg to give them a 1.6% share for $240 million. By 2008, Facebook was valued at a stunning $3.75 billion to 5 billion.

In this 60 Minutes interview, Mark Zuckerberg helps Leslie Stahl set up her Facebook account. Leslie Stahl attributes Facebook’s success to its uncanny ability to reconnect people who have not contacted each other for a long time.

“It used to be the case you switch jobs. And then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with those people,” Mark Zuckerberg explains. “One of the things Facebook does is make it really easy to stay in touch with these people.”

Another astonishing fact is Mark Zuckerberg’s age. At the time of this interview, Mark Zuckerberg was only 23. His young age led Silicon Valley writer Kara Swisher to label him “the toddler CEO.”

When Leslie Stahl asked Mark Zuckerberg if his young age was an issue, he replied, says, “There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.”

Leslie Stahl asked Mark Zuckerberg about how Facebook’s runaway popularity has even led to a transformation in politics. All political candidates now have a Facebook profile. “Because politicians can communicate with tens of thousands of people at the same time,” Mark Zuckerberg says, “it’s pretty effective for them in campaigning.”

Mark Zuckerberg explains the eventual source of Facebook’s profitability through its unusual ad campaigns. By friends endorsing products to their other Facebook friends, “they become the ad.” Mark Zuckerberg plans to make these recommendations more proactively. In a sense, Mark Zuckerberg says, you can become a spokesman for Nike if you put that information in your profile.

More information on Mark Zuckerberg:

Mark Zuckerberg’s Executive Bio on Facebook.

Profile of Mark Zuckerberg on Crunch Base.

Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at the Web 2.0 summit.