Yesterday was a big day, PR-wise, for Mark Zuckerberg and Carol Bartz. Zuck used the austere pages of the Washington Post to soothe concerns about Facebook’s will to invade privacy, while Bartz showed up on stage at a TechCrunch conference to defend Yahoo against one of its loudest critics, TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington. Both CEOs displayed their usual communication approaches–hers a defensive and blowsy vulgarity and his near-fatal boredom.
What follows is an imaginary conversation based on actual quotes from a video account and the op-ed.
Mark Zuckerberg: Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas.
Carol Bartz: There’s no single strategy at Yahoo.
Zuckerberg: People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that’s more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today.
Bartz: Yahoo is a company that is very, very strong in content. It’s moving towards the web of one…. People come to check the things they like. You can just get it together… Yahoo is one site people always stop at.
Zuckerberg: Facebook has been growing quickly. It has become a community of more than 400 million people in just a few years.
Bartz: If that’s all you’ve got, you better quit now.
