aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
SXSW Zuckerberg keynote takeaway
The first thing I have to say is I come away liking Zuckerberg more than I have since all of the last year’s Facebook stumbles. The second thing I note is the irony that it was a woman, Kara Swisher, who has led the charge against the “Toddler CEO” and it is a woman, Business Week’s Sarah Lacy, that fumbled the interview that humanized him for me again.
The irony is that Swisher first came to my attention with her book, aol.com, about Steve Case. And Lacy’s now writing a book on Zuckerberg. So I was pleased to see Swisher come to Lacy’s defense today:
I could not agree more with both Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Valleywag’s Owen Thomas, an unlikely and motley trio we three, when I say: Leave Sarah Lacy alone.
MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier told Wired.com that he thought sexism might have played a role in the SXSW audience reaction. I have to say that I agree. I immediately remembered a very ugly bit of misogyny last year around Kathy Sierra.
If you think my comparison is overwrought, I’d grant you that it may be; but is it really any more so than the reaction to Sarah’s interview?
I am known to admire Jeff Jarvis. It’s all well and good for him to sit there and say of Sarah’s interview that, “It wasn’t tough. It was a privilege and she was blowing it.”
Well, you know what? It is a privilege and it is tough.
It strikes me that that’s why big deal people are jumping out of buildings and that criticism is fair and legitimate but she deserves some of the empathy that Jarvis has for the “shy and nervous” Zuckerberg and the hostile audience.
Zuckerberg’s a smart 23 year-old but he has no business being valued at 15 billion bucks and I question the system that’s put him there. The whole self-important jargon-filled show that seriously thinks they’re going to bring peace to the Middle East by enabling people to communicate and connect on Facebook echoes the last bubble if you ask me.
Here’s the keynote…
