 | SxSW is featuring Mark Zuckerberg as a keynote speaker. Whenever the subject of Facebook and Zuckerberg in particular comes up in everyday geek conversation, the words “punk” and “lucky” tend to come up quite a bit. |
Perhaps I have a different perspective, because:
a.) I have never coded anything, so there’s not much for me to be jealous of and
b.) Zuckerberg still manages to remind me of a nice geeky guy I would bum physics notes from in high school, so I cut him some slack.
Let’s evaluate why the average hard working geek would want to jump Mark Zuckerberg:
1.) Wired speculated that his net worth was somewhere around 1.5 billion dollars. Granted, this number came out in July before the whole Microsoft/Facebook media blitzkrieg, but this still puts his salary at 22,727 times the median salary for developers in this area. Zuckerberg is all of 23, in case you didn’t catch the “6o Minutes” special.
2.) We’ve all Googled ourselves. We all want backlinks. When Zuckerberg looks at Facebook’s backlinks, he can see that there are approximately 452, 000 to date. Who wouldn’t want all the delicious press associated with 452,000 backlinks?
3.) That whole “Hey, you jacked our idea and are now making stupid money” ordeal that’s still going on.
4.) Who honestly wants to be zombified or turned into a pirate?
Pimpin’ Facebook Ain’t Easy
Although it seems like Facebook can do no wrong with their incredible developer network, there is an unfortunate side effect of starting a site where people just want to unassumingly keep up with their friends. It’s hard to make money with it. With Beacon still in need of a major overhaul and all eyes on him for an IPO date, it looks like Zuckerberg has his hands full with Facebook.
Can SxSW goers learn by watching Zuckerberg speak? I sure hope so. Just leave the eggs and various projectiles at home.