Sarah Lacy reports on technology for Business Week, but on Sunday, technology was her worst enemy.
As she interviewed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival, the audience was reporting on her questions and style by using Twitter, and their reviews weren’t good.
Twitter won the best blog award in 2007, at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival for “sites that revolutionize the power of publishing by providing regularly updated content of a personal or professional nature.”
The website allows users up to 140 characters to express what they are thinking or doing, immediately publishing their input online and via text message. The venture is spearheaded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams.
This year’s SXSW festival proved Twitter’s power.
Twitter made it possible for many tech enthusiasts not attending the festival to get a feel for the Zuckerberg/Lacy interview through a live feed of “tweets,” or comments.
Lacy was widely panned for her interviewing techniques. The discussion was dubbed a “trainwreck” by tech blogs, which criticized Lacy for often turning the conversation to herself, interrupting Zuckerberg and failing to ask specific questions.
The audience reacted audibly at the forum and electronically on Twitter. At one point an audience member yelled out: “Talk about something interesting!” In the open question-and-answer portion of the interview, one attendee asked Zuckerberg, “Other than really rough interviews, what are the toughest obstacles Facebook faces?”
After Lacy went off on a tangent about Zuckerberg’s practice of taking notes long hand, even Zuckerberg interjected, “You have to ask a question.”
A search for Zuckerberg on Tweetscan.com, a site that makes Twitter’s content searchable, provides plenty of commentary on the Zuckerberg/Lacy interview.
A Twitter user herself, Lacy responded to her critics on her personal Twitter page, writing: “seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.”
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