The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin has this piece today about the elite FourSquare Summit, which has become the cold weather analog to Herb Allen’s ultra-elite Sun Valley gathering of media moguls. Sorkin leads with the fact that Facebook’s 22 year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg wore flip flops without socks at the Pierre Hotel in one of the most formal and fashionable cities, New York.
Dozens of the world’s biggest media moguls and investment bankers, dressed in perfectly pressed suits, mingled in the lobby of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan yesterday at the annual FourSquare conference.
And then there was Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old chief executive of the social networking site Facebook, wearing Adidas flip-flops — sans socks — with a blazer and jeans.
Um, that’s what you call, at the minimum, confidence, an attitude of entitlement that was seemingly not misplaced. While YouTube’s Chad Hurley was the star of Sun Valley, Zuckerberg apparently was man of the hour at FourSquare as media companies look at his social networking site as the next big thing. So, he can apparently wear whatever he wants, because the chieftains of the media world stood in line to talk to him.
YouTube’s sale may be only a month old, but Wall Street had already appeared to move on to the next big deal with all eyes on Mr. Zuckerberg, who has been in on-and-off negotiations with Yahoo. At the conference yesterday, Mr. Zuckerberg could be seen standing amid a throng of high-powered would-be suitors. Analysts have estimated that Facebook could have a value of as much as $1 billion.
All that aside, the moguls all apparently talked amongst themselves at a private dinner the night before about whether Internet valuations are overly inflated. And a weird note: Jerry Seinfeld (huh?) was apparently one of the key panelists at the event, riffing on the low quality of user-generated comedy.
One intriguing note: Cambridge, MA-based Brightcove, which has quietly become the engine behind dozens of top video sites, is a much lusted-after acquisition target.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:21 AM|Comments(0)
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