My goal was never really to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.
— Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, on whether the social network is losing its charm and getting boring. In a nutshell, he said his goal was to make sure Facebook simply works, and that it is indispensable.
The question was asked Thursday at Facebook headquarters, where Zuckerberg addressed questions such as why the company forced users to install Messenger; why he wears a gray T-shirt every day; what he thought of the film The Social Network ; and more. The Q&A was open to the public for the first time.
On why Messenger was forced on users: It was for our own good, he said. Asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask… We saw that the top messaging apps people were using were their own app. These apps that are fast and just focused on messaging. You re probably messaging people 15 times per day. Having to go into an app and take a bunch of steps to get to messaging is a lot of friction.
On the gray T-shirt (and don t worry, there s more than one): I really want to clear my life so I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except serving this community.
On the movie: His life (coding, building a product, building a company) was not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about. He said the makers embellished and made things up. He said he found the made-up stuff really hurtful, but did not elaborate about what was made up.
Photo from Mercury News archives
