image3697348g.jpg Everyone’s talking about last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. I watched it and came away thinking “what a wasted, multi-million dollar PR opportunity.”

The piece started out sounding like an early Valentine for Zuckerberg, but then it turned into an uncomfortable — and sometimes painful — interview. I won’t spend much time on his actual performance — it’s safe to say that he’s in desperate need of some media training. Even Lesley Stahl interjected at one point that Zuckerberg has been described as being awkward.

More than his uncomfortable performance, I was really surprised that Facebook/Zuckerberg squandered such a huge opportunity. I flinched each time he was thrown an excellent transition question and he missed it. For example, here are a few key topics that he didn’t insert into the interview:

  1. For all it’s hype, Facebook is still the #2 social network behind MySpace. Why would I join Facebook over MySpace? I’ll admit I was waiting (and hoping) for a slam about MySpace’s multiple cameos on Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator” … but they never came. I was expecting to hear Facebook’s value vis-a-vis MySpace, though.
  2. No really, why do I want to join Facebook? Early on, Lesley got excited when a former colleague reconnected with her after setting up her profile — which gave him a perfect segue to throw out a dozen other examples of people reconnecting, business people networking, or even someone finding their college sweetheart. Anything beyond Scrabble? Given the demographics of 60 Minutes’ viewers, I was particularly expecting to hear a few reasons why the Gen X and Boomer generations should join. Instead, he talked about Scrabble. Now, I love the Scrabble app just as much as Zuckerberg apparently does. Unfortunately that’s about the only use I’ve found for Facebook so far, and I was waiting for him change that.
  3. Can a 23 year old really run a $15 billion company (setting aside that it’s not actually worth that, for a moment)? Lesley brought this up a few times, and Zuckerberg’s three word answers didn’t cut it. Why not point to how quickly the company is growing? Why not talk about him solidifying funding and Microsoft’s investment? Surely there could have been a FEW examples to address this. Why not point to what he’s already accomplished as CEO?
  4. Is Zuckerberg really a visionary? This one came up a few times, most notably when he was compared to the Google Gazillionaires. What a great opportunity to talk about where he sees Facebook going, how innovative the company is vs. other hot startups, etc. Yet, we got nothing.
  5. Was all the bad publicity wrong about Beacon and Facebook’s ads? With this one, Zuckerberg gave a little answer, but I don’t think “Facebook needs to pay its employees” was the right answer. I’ll grant him that it’s a legitimate reason to start monetizing Facebook’s audience, but he should have given several other, much more compelling, reasons. And then immediately followed those with an explanation about how/why the privacy concerns of Facebook users have been addressed.
  6. Why should Facebook employees feel proud about working for him? At any point, Zuckerberg could have talked about how revolutionary/innovative/etc. the company was, but he didn’t. I don’t even remember him smiling when he spoke about the team working for him.
  7. What’s next? I wasn’t expecting to hear any product news, but Zuckerberg could have thrown in a few teaser comments to keep me interested in Facebook in the coming months.

As I write this, I wonder how involved Facebook’s PR team was with this opportunity. From my vantage point, either Facebook doesn’t view PR as a strategic component to the company’s success, or Zuckerberg is a classic example of a CEO who thinks he knows PR and won’t take guidance. Or, he needs a new PR team. Regardless, I think the entire Facebook team botched a huge opportunity last night that might not come his way again.

What did you think of the interview?