The twitterati chirped restlessly, while waiting for to take the stage.
“Getting brutal here at #TCDisrupt, waiting for Zuckerberg/ @arrington chat,” tweeted skwulf, “Kinda like the Serengeti; leonine nerds roaring on chairs.”
Others commented on the heavy-duty security that had just moved in to make sure the Facebook CEO was protected from unknown threats.
“Aisles of #TCDisrupt clogged with bloggrz,” MikeIsaac tweeted. “This is now a fire hazard.”
More than 15,000 people tuned into Tech Crunch’s live stream of the Disrupt SF conference Tuesday afternoon, in addition to the thousands of people who attended the event in person. The video showcased a conversation between Michael Arrington, blogger at large, and .
“Of note: Nearly a year since Zuckerberg has done a sit-down, free-for-all interview. Last, if memory serves, was Charlie Rose in November,” tweeted @MikeIsaac, who is a senior editor at All Things D.
The CEO of the social media company, which is headquartered in Menlo Park, touched on a variety of issues. Arrington asked him a number of questions. After answering each one, Zuckerberg brought the conversation back to mobile products and the reasons that the company would be focusing on developing this vertical.
“We have more usage on our mobile website than we have on our mobile IOS and Android apps together,” Zuckerberg said. “Mobile web is huge.”
The company has about 950 million users worldwide, according to Zuckerberg. He said more people spend more time using Facebook with their mobile devices than from a desktop, so the company is going to prioritize that. One of the reasons is that mobile users are more engaged on the site than people who login from a desktop computer, he said.
Arrington asked about the IPO, the stock price, and employee retention. Zuckerberg addressed each question with the rapid staccato speech of someone who has discussed this topic a number of times, yet wants to please the person in front of them.
“The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing,” Zuckerberg said, noting that the company would continue its mission of making the world “more open and connected.” While it may not please everyone, he said Facebook would be building things that are going to "build value over the long term."
The Facebook CEO said the team will focus on building infrastructure that can be integrated with as many different devices as possible. He said that based on statistics, and his own intuition, it is a good idea.
“I basically live on my mobile device,” he said. “The founders letter in the S1… I wrote that on my mobile phone,” he quipped.
He said that people have their devices when they want to do things, so the energy in the ecosystem is going to go toward building mobile experiences.
Is this a smart move for Facebook? Tell us in the comments.
