Mark Zuckerberg was in the house at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in downtown Sao Paulo yesterday, evangelizing the gospel of Facebook to an "entrepreneurs forum" of mostly under-25 students who showed up at the big neoconservative education and training organization to learn how to be a successful young entrepreneur like him.
What Brazilians learned is that the self-admittedly shy Zuckerberg sees himself as a builder and programmer at heart, not an investor. And that one of his passions when he puts on his old programmers hat is to see just how far Facebook can expand Dunbar's number of how many stable social relationship a person can maintain. He made a strong case outlining Facebook's commitment to neutrality and transparency and welcomed local developers to take advantage of Facebook connect at no cost.
More importantly Zuckerberg, wittingly or unwittingly, dropped a clue on how he sees the Web "playing out." His characterization of Facebook in this process put it into the context of "social networks," not "social media."
The all English all the time event was a tribute to the Brazilian education system's ability to turn out students capable of listening and responding to the rapid voice pattern of someone who got 700+ on their American SAT English scores. Children in Brazilian schools, public and private, start learning English in elementary school. A big Brazilian public relations firm retained by FGV enforced their official anti-flashmob caveat of no journalists or bloggers allowed in the big, low ceiling, claustrophobic lecture hall. Media could register and watch the event at Facebook on streaming Facebook TV which was as good as being there.
Zuckerberg reminded his roadshow guests that Facebook reaches out to diverse cultures in over 60 languages. But this experience was so American you could have been spun around three times and told you were at Piedmont Valley Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia and believed it. On a global dimension over 1400 of the 3400 who RSVPd on the Facebook site and said they would attend the event by watching Facebook TV participated, an above average response for an opt-in public relations event.
Brazil has the world's strongest internet backbone outside the US, a strong national identity, its own music and an average annual income that is just one quarter of what an American household earns. And the Alpha social network is Google's godzilla Orkut, which has over 47 million members, grows virally, operates in 34 languages and has a worldwide headquarters about 250 miles up the road in Belo Horizonte. Most of Brazil's Orkut users are Brazilian, not Globalist in outlook and lack the income to be Facebook power users.
Zuckerberg was in Brazil to convince people to join Facebook- and there has been a big uptick in Brazilians doing that. He thinks aloud that if people like the Facebook offering they will switch their social network preference to Facebook. But for that to happen, the face who evangelizes Facebook needs to talk in Brazilian Portuguese, not in Globalist English. That's where the real business is in this 190 million plus market.