Harvard U. dropout and Facebook founder Mark E. Zuckerberg addressed Facebook’s future and the potential for a Facebook office in Boston at a packed press conference at Harvard Monday afternoon.
Zuckerberg emerged from the Loeb House, where he was meeting with University President Drew G. Faust, at 4:30 p.m., and answered three questions from the press before going directly to an exclusive discussion at Farkas Hall (formerly New College Theatre) with 200 students.
Clad in jeans and a navy hoodie, Zuckerberg bumped fists with an excited student to cheers and the constant click of cameras before making his way to microphones set up outside Lamont. Surrounded by the press on one side and a crowd of students armed with cameras and iPhones on the other, Zuckerberg kept a smile on his face throughout the press conference.
“Oh, we’re just getting started,” Zuckerberg said enthusiastically when asked what Facebook still had to accomplish.
“The original goals for the company are to make it so that the whole world can be more open and connected. And you know the last five years have really just been about helping people get signed up and stay connected with their friends,” he added. “But I think the next five or ten years are going to be about all of these different products and industries that can be rethought.”
Citing recent developments in social games, music, and television on Facebook, Zuckerberg explained that Facebook would provide a platform through which “different industries can be rethought in different ways so that your friends are there with you.”
In response to a question about why Facebook had not followed in the footsteps of Microsoft and Google and started a Boston branch, Zuckerberg struck a hopeful tone but confirmed that there are no immediate plans to do so.
Facebook has opened one development office in Seattle, Wash., according to Zuckerberg, in large part because it is in the same time zone as the company’s Palo Alto, Calif. office.
“We want to really get the culture there right before we start opening up other offices, but at some point hopefully down the line we will do that,” he said.
Students submitted resumés in advance to the Office of Career Services to take part in a discussion on Facebook moderated by Computer Science Senior Lecturer David J. Malan ’99 after the press conference, and about 200 students were accepted on a first-come-first served basis.
Applications closed as soon as the theater reached capacity, but students who did not receive tickets were placed on a short waiting list. All students from the standby list who showed up prior to the event were accommodated, according to Kevin Galvin, Director of News and Media Relations at the University.
Zuckerberg’s visit to Harvard is part of a three-university recruiting trip along the East Coast that includes MIT and Carnegie Mellon University.
“There’s a lot of really smart people here,” Zuckerberg answered when asked why he chose to recruit at Harvard and MIT. “And a lot of them are making decisions about where they’re going to work when they graduate in the next couple of weeks.”