All Things Digital

For those who missed it, here is the entire video of the piece CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired on Facebook last night, helmed by veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl.

It is not exactly the big wet kiss I was expecting the hot social-networking company would get, but it was also definitely not an ouch-that-hurts piece that could have been done.

For those who don’t know the tale, it hits all the high (and low) points of the Facebook saga, with a button-pushing efficiency that television does so well. Thus, a synopsis:

Web Wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg, who seems genetically unable to smile (unlike, say, his deeply charming sister). Harvard. Ratty hoodies and flip-flops. Mark makes a Facebook profile for Lesley (how much do we love that she blocked her boss Les Moonves?).

Next stop: Silicon Valley! Dropping out and venture funding. Toddler CEO (that one was coined by BoomTown). Crazy HQ with kooky-looking employees, one of whom you know was forced to ride a unicycle through the office by Lesley.

Big growth. Is Mark Google’s Larry and Sergey rolled into one? Inexplicably, ZERO mention of its bigger rival, MySpace, even once. Worth $15 billion?–an insane number Lesley does not question nearly enough.

Oops, Privacy! Oops, Beacon! BoomTown tsks tsks that stalkerish advertising idiocy and is asked about Mark’s qualifications as CEO (although no one cares what BoomTown thinks). Mark retorts: Hey, we need to make money. Lesley, so give the Wunderkind a break!

But here is the entire segment for your viewing enjoyment:

Here are two clips of the much longer interview I did with Lesley Stahl of CBS’ “60 Minutes” for their piece on Facebook, which did not appear on the program last night. They are a bit tougher on the company, although I think they are also quite fair (paging Brandee Barker: That’s right, fair!).

In the first, Stahl noted at the start that I am known as “that nasty woman” at Facebook and called “mean” by some there, because I have had a few tough questions in my BoomTown posts for the social-networking start-up’s business underpinnings.

If that’s the reason, especially since I am also clearly praising the service itself in this clip, I guess I consider the monikers to be compliments.

(One caveat–in this clip, I say Facebook has “no revenues,” but this is not true obviously as I and many others have reported. I believe just previous to this part of the interview, I was asked a lot about the particulars of the revenues, which I have written need to be much less dependent on guaranteed proceeds from Facebook’s relationship with Microsoft. But that part of the interview is not here, which gives the wrong impression that I am declaring that Facebook has no revenues. It does and they are growing strongly, but my point here was that revenues are still not in sync with Facebook’s oversized valuation.)

In this second clip below, Stahl asks me about the “Toddler CEO” title I foisted on co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg a while back. Let me say, at the time I meant it as a joke and not as a judgment (and I know my toddlers, given I have had two actual ones).

Still, it probably was unfair and even ageist (in the nontypical direction) to call a 23-year-old Zuckerberg a toddler. But, as I note here, Facebook probably at least has to consider a more experienced CEO in the planning for an eventual IPO.

CBS’s “60 Minutes” will air its Facebook piece on Sunday, and BoomTown is curious to see what take the iconic new magazine show will have on the hot and hyped social network and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

In clips it has released, Zuckerberg tells veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl that its stalkerish ad product Beacon–a half-baked ad scheme Facebook cooked up that sends information about your purchases on partner Web sites back to your profile on the service–needs work.

Really? I had no idea! Oh, wait, I did.

Zuckerberg goes on to assure Stahl and the viewing public that Beacon will be a good tool someday. “It might take some work for us to get this exactly right,” said Zuckerberg in the interview. “This is something we think is going to be a really good thing.”

Since the 23-year-old is no Martha Stewart, we would like to take his word for it, but will not for now.

Zuckerberg also tells Stahl not to expect an IPO in 2008–well, I was not expecting one, but thanks for the confirmation–meaning that Facebook would have to make do with the $300 million it recently got from Microsoft and Chinese rich man Li Ka-shing for small stakes in the company.

The investments, as faithful BoomTown readers know, gave Facebook an insane $15 billion valuation. Despite the start-up’s fast growth and impressive record of building a pretty good service, I hope Stahl gives that wacky number her patented dubious eyebrow raise she always throws at various and sundry midrange dictators talking democracy.

We’re also interested in seeing the piece for you’re-so-vain reasons, because I was also interviewed by Stahl for the segment.

No surprise, Stahl asked if I was biased because of my partner, the Google exec (see my voluminous disclosure about that and more here), and because Rupert Murdoch now owned both Facebook rival MySpace and Dow Jones (owner of this site).

Well, no to both, since I was slapping around Facebook long before Google declared Open Social war on it and also before News Corp. was our corporate pooh-bah (also, the idea of me doing Rupe’s social-networking dirty work is laughable).

But most of the interview was about the many challenging issues I and others have raised about Facebook. In her lean-forward style, Stahl asked me a range of questions, mostly having to do with my many pieces on the start-up and Zuckerberg.

An old pro at the shake-up game, she noted at the start that some had called me “nasty” and “mean” for my sharpish reporting on Facebook.

I confess! I confess! It’s all true!

That is, if by mean, Stahl meant my thinking the valuation was undeserved thus far, raising questions about the need for a magic business plan to support that valuation and, of course, my wondering if Zuckerberg was experienced enough to be Facebook’s CEO.

Then, of course you can call me Cruella De Poke.

How I wish CBS–paging Quincy Smith!–would allow embedding of its videos, but here is a link to one clip from the interview where Zuckerberg talks about Beacon. And here is another about Zuckerberg’s wacky days as a hacker at Harvard.

The show airs at 7 p.m.

For those who missed it in “The Sopranos” frenzy (and stop arguing now–it was a good ending), CBS’s “60 Minutes” did a pretty warm and fuzzy profile of media and Internet mogul Barry Diller on Sunday.

He comes off charming and smooth, expertly batting away all suggestions by interviewer Lesley Stahl that he is tough to work for, or too imperious, or paid too much, or that his various Internet companies under the InterActiveCorp banner are too disparate.

“Have you ever heard your meetings described as making people crawl over barbed wire?” Stahl asks in the CBS report.

“Oh, please. For some people I think it is that, but look, it is absolutely process,” Diller parries, using “oh, please” as the best verbal cudgel ever.

CBS does not give out its code to embed this video, but you can watch it here and read about it here.

Calling the Internet Diller’s “third act,” even though he has been onstage in the digital space for some time now, it’s still a nice synopsis of a lot of things Diller has said onstage at two past D conferences (D1 and D3). IAC owns five dozen sites, such as Ask.com, Ticketmaster, Citysearch, Evite, Match.com and LendingTree, and it recently bought CollegeHumor.com.

(He is also developing a personal finance site for young people with Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

While there is a lot of old stuff in the interview, the most interesting material centers on what Diller has been saying a lot of late: That content will rule with the eventual rise of online hits. Diller, a longtime Hollywood player, knows from content.

And he has repeatedly told me that he likes the idea of cheaper production and vast and inexpensive distribution (and without gatekeepers like he used to be) the Web promises.

“We’re going to invest probably hundreds of millions of dollars in this over the next years,” Diller told Stahl.