Beer Swilling Facebook CEO Warned Against Expansion in 2005
In 2005, Facebook had 5 million users rather than 500 million. And instead of being at the center of an Oscar-winning Aaron Sorkin movie, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was answering questions from a goofy guy with a camcorder—and explaining the perils of growing Facebook beyond the college market.
Filmmaker Derek Franzese posted to YouTube a five minute excerpt from an unreleased Zuckerberg interview shot for their 2008 documentary "Now Entering," about "a millenial generation." The excerpt went online last year, but is getting some notice today after it was written up by the Huffington Post — and because it shows a younger, less certain, but more relaxed version of a tech executive who now insipres fear in giant rivals like Google. "Should I put the beer down?" Zuckerberg asks at the start of the interview. Later, he discusses why he doesn't want to turn 2005 Facebook, which was exclusively for college students, into a giant, omnipresent social network like... well, like the Facebook of today:
There doesn't necessarily have to be more. You know? I mean, like, a lot of people are focused on taking over the world, or doing, like, the biggest thing — getting the most users. And, I mean, I think, like, part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely. There is a level of service that we could provide when we were just at Harvard that we can't provide for all of the colleges, and theres a level of service we can provide when we're a college network that we wouldn't be able to provide if we went to other types of things. So I mean, like, I really just want see everyone focus on college and create a really cool college directory that is really relevant for students.
Either that or, like, maybe, like, get valued at one hundred billion dollars and take over the world, right Mark? The customer service thing will sort itself out.