SXSWi: When audiences attack

Ian Lamont — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:20:48 -0700

SXSWi attendees are buzzing about Sarah Lacy's awkward on-stage keynote interview with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday. While the BusinessWeek columist and co-host of Yahoo Finance's TeckTicker got a few interesting answers from the Facebook founder and CEO about the company's strategy, by the end of the session many in the audience were clearly upset by what was happening on stage. Judging by Omar L. Gallaga's video for the Austin American-Statesman, Lacy's problems included bad questions, constant interruptions, self-promotion, awkward moments, and a poor understanding of the audience's expectations. People are angry at the journalist, while Zuckerberg is enjoying a rare moment of public sympathy.

Mediabistro's FishbowlNY has the play-by-play of the one-hour interview, with one of the writers wryly noting at the halfway point that 'we're glad tomatoes are out of season.' Dave McClure, who was in the audience, offers some additional perspective. There's more reaction at Techmeme. Lacy has briefly responded here, and there is an interesting post-keynote video interview with Lacy ("I made the mistake of coming to a developer conference"), but it will be interesting to hear a more thorough self-examination, after the emotions have subsided.

Related: Twitter got its first real workout during and after the Zuckerberg keynote, according to Wired's Megan McCarthy and Michael Calore. But it didn't go down, which bodes well for the many people who support the Standard's prediction that Twitter will experience 0% downtime during SXSWi (current community consensus: 84%).

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