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Interview With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Products, Funding, Competition

I recently had a chance to sit down and have a one-on-one chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There was lots to talk about, and he answered questions about, among other things, Facebook products, privacy issues, rumors about recent fundraising by the company, and competition with platform developers. Quotations below are based on my notes and roughly accurate.

AskMarkets Launches Prediction Market For Crunchbase. Greek startup AskMarkets, which lets users create and participate in non-cash prediction markets of any kind, has created a prediction market for startups in CrunchBase. The application lets users bet on the chances any particular startup will be acquired, get additional funding or head to the deadpool in the next year. An example: users say Animoto has a 51.5% chance of being acquired, a 25% chance of being funded and a 23.4% chance of deadpooling. I bought some shares of “get acquired” because I love this startup’s focus on on making one product perfectly while competitors

Escape from the browser?

Schwartz comes out swinging in the video embedded below, talking of Java’s strong position on desktops and what he calls the majority of mobile devices. He frames the discussion around the desire of companies to escape from the lock-in of the browser, dividing the world conceptually between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google Chrome (presumably including Firefox and its growing share.) As he details a range of screens through which to project Java power, you can even see an iPhone on the far right though Java, like Flash, is shut out of the Apple smartphone.

This may be my new favorite iPhone application - Visual Dial lets you add a picture of a friend to the iPhone home page (as if it were an application). Click the picture and it acts like a visual speed dialer to that person.

Simple. And very useful.

The video sort of says it all. The application is still under review by Apple, we’ll update when it becomes available. They are letting a few people into a private beta before approval - details are here.

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