What Went Wrong in Sarah Lacy's Interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg?

BusinessWeek reporter Sarah Lacy conducted a keynote interview session with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as part of an SXSW conference. In the interview, the audience began to criticize her technique and even Mark Zuckerberg called her to task over how she was conducting the interview. Sarah Lacy did the clear majority of the talking, and asked very few questions, instead making statements, and talking about things that occurred during her book interview with Mark Zuckerberg, rather than addressing the issues the audience was there to hear about.

The first thing Sarah Lacy did wrong was forget about her audience. The forum was SXSW, and therefore all questions she asked should have been those geared towards the interests of such an audience.

For those who don't know, SXSW stands for 'South by Southwest' and is an Austin, Texas. It's a series of conferences and festivals revolving around music, film, and interactive media. In other words, her audience would likely be 'techno-geeks' who would be most interested in the development of Facebook as well as upcoming features planned for users of the social networking hub. Other issues to be addressed would have included comparisons of the social networking utility with competitors such as MySpace and Google; and the latest news involving Facebook such as new hire, Google's Sheryl Sandberg.

The next way in which Sarah Lacy erred was in forgetting whom was the subject of the interview. Here is a hint, it was not her, contrary to how she conducted herself. She spent far too much time trying to be cute, talking, and adding her own opinions. The keynote was not her, it was Mark Zuckerberg; and as a professional journalist, that should have been one of the first things she noted for her interview. She took this mistake further with the poor manners of continually interrupting Mark Zuckerberg when he did get an opportunity to speak.