Mark Zuckerberg, Sarah Lacey Interview Disaster
Posted by Nick O'Neill on March 9th, 2008 3:32 PMOf all the interviews I have ever had the opportunity to sit in on, this one takes the cake for being the worst. Sarah Lacey, the author of a Business Week cover article as well as a book on Mark Zuckerberg, appeared to spend more time discussing the personal moments that her and Mark shared before. At least ten times during the interview, Sarah Lacey failed to end on a question and instead preferred to end on statements. Mark Zuckerberg even called her out for it stating that the interview would be more interesting if she asked some questions.
Halfway through the interview, Sarah Lacey ineloquently interjected that she was trying to understand the hand signals of the stage people and was surprised that she was only halfway through the interview. Zuckerberg replied “are you out of questions?” The grand finale of the interview resulted in the audience revolting after one person said “say something interesting” to which Lacey replied, “you don’t understand how hard my job is.”
Sarah Lacey was obviously unprepared for the interview to which Mark Zuckerberg was simply a passenger of. The end of the interview was Mark Zuckerberg stating that the interview wasn’t that bad… This interview was ultimately a disaster. I will be posting video footage of the full interview shortly.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
The problem wasn’t Lacy, it’s Facebook and the way they choose to do their PR. They keep themselves at a profound distance from the community. I doubt they would have let anyone other than “his” reporter interview him.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Ms. Lacey is like so many people you meet in the valley. Looks pretty, goes to the right parties, totally talentless.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
this interview almost took down twitter today.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Maybe Lucy was suffering from “Facebook fatigue.”
March 9th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I was so utterly disappointed in this. If she would of for once gotten away from how wrapped up she was in her self and asked a question that wasn’t based solely on internet gossip, we who paid good money for this conference would of benefited.
Just awful…
March 9th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
The crowd got rowdy as hell.. lots of booing, laughing, etc. I felt bad for Sarah.
March 9th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
The interview was awful and I dont believe the crowd was harsh unnecessarily. Lacy acted somewhat unprofesionally, frequently made statements about MZ or FB and then asked MZ to agree with her.
She not seem like a trained writer or journalist but instead a sorority girl. I’m not saying her job is easy, but I can say I’ve witnessed a lot of people doing it much better. Also what was up with her multiple comparisons to herself and Leslie Stahl?
March 9th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Feel bad for Sarah. Did you notice the way she was sitting. It was like she wanted Mark to jump her bones. Seriously the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen. She clearly wanted it to be all about her and not guy she was suppose to interview. If I were Mark I’d take that book she wrote about me and hit her upside the head with it.
March 9th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
“Mark Zuckerberg even called her out for it stating that the interview would be more interesting if she asked some questions.”
Didn’t he say something along those lines to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes?
March 9th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
This was a disaster. It was one of these very uncomfortable moments I get when watching “the office’ (British version), but this one not seemed to go away.
I felt bad for Sarah but she brought this onto herself by
- Not asking interesting question
- forgetting that the majority does not know Marc as well as she does, therefore asking irrelevant question or just stating things
- interrupting Marc when he actually got started talking
- responding to the crowd in an unprofessional way
- and yes we all do work for money, so telling that what you are doing is not as easy as it seems…ouch
I also found it very interesting that she had to hear a question from that one person who had yelled out “ask interesting questions.” It got very personally.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
what happened sounds like facebook. SNS and user-generated content is our new social paradigm. if it’s boring, we make it ourselves now.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Guy Kawasaki interviewing Mark would have been epic… and no doubt better. I feel bad for Mark, Lacy was terrible.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
It was awful to watch. She kept making inane statements and he had, seemingly, nothing to say himself.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Worst.. interview…ever
The crowd became ‘rowdy’ because she kept talking about herself — and even went so far as to steal his announcement ‘thunder’. She made several comments I felt were inappropriate about him, cut him off, and redirected the interview into side stories about her book interviews.
Her attempt to stab back via a lame twitter post is only going to fan the flame…
March 9th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
who cares.
March 9th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Worst interview I have ever seen and I have been to 20+ tech conferences. Really frustrating. People who were not there will not understand how poorly Lacy did. Terrible.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:14 am
I can’t wait to watch the video of this disaster… it was splattered all over twitterverse!
March 10th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Can’t wait for the video.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:22 am
This was the worst interview I have ever seen - It wasnt an interview, Lacy was more interested in projecting the relationship she had with Zuck and her upcoming book than professionally covering Facebook and the hot issues .
It could have been so good…
March 10th, 2008 at 12:26 am
I was there - it was a trainwreck. And I did not feel bad for Sarah for a second. Anyone who did must have thought she was hot or cute - the fact is that she was unprepared and totally full of herself. Very unprofessional. This is very bad for her career.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Thanks for reporting on this Nick.
Facebook has to keep Zuckerberg at a distance. With a shy, young, snippy CEO, and a company poised to go public, Zuckerberg can’t be running around getting filmed on TMZ acting foolish.
I know a ton of people who have the charisma and wit to keep a bad interview interesting as interviewers. I don’t know anybody who would take on the task of interviewing Zuckerberg without being able to keep it very, very interesting.
Maybe next time they should get you to do it, Nick!
March 10th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I just caught a clip of a piece of the interview. Looks like she has no idea how to run an interview. She’s not just unprepared… but her random questions are yes/no at best.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I thought getting caught being really stupid on TMZ was some kinda, like, goal or something of Interweb stuff like Facebook in the first place.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Yup, that was pretty bad. It is pretty easy to see how she got where she is…mostly DUMB LUCK…and I do mean DUMB. Neither one of them came across as being to bright. I am a little BORED with Facebook and maybe this will help the whole thing just quietly go away.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I don’t know why people are surprised about this. Sarah is like every other vapid talking head in the valley… promoting her book and her name more than actually trying to deliver a good performance. I was incredibly bored with the interview as a whole and everytime Zuckerberg sparked my interest with something exciting, she cut him off and brought the discussion back to superficial crap again.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Honestly, this looks like two kids going for course credit on their college public access channel.
Yippee, it’s SXSW! Let’s have some young, ill-prepared journalist interview some young, boring guy who doesn’t know how to hold the audience’s attention! If he were a better interview, she wouldn’t look so bad. If she were a better reporter, she would have been able to make him look good. Barring that, *splat*.
March 10th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Sarah was horrible and enough has been written about her performance already but did Mark actually have anything interesting to say? All I heard was a repeat of the same phrase “Facebook is a platform to help people connect and communicate effectively.” Enough already!
March 10th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I was there: She was unprepared, she flirted, she giggled, she wanted to talk about his big $$$$ and she was just plain stupid. When he talked about how they had just launched Facebook in Spanish, she pumped her fist and shouted, “GO SPAIN!” The audience groaned. She missed the point time after time, she interrupted and she committed the cardinal sin of interviewing: She made it about HER. But obviously this young woman is madly in love with herself.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
The twitter back channel created a very interesting dynamic from the audience. The crowd lashing out to Lacy because they had the confidence that everyone was thinking the same thing. This is going to be interesting when the elections start heating up and how we influence what we all are thinking as we are sharing our thoughts in real time.