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Back To Facebook’s Roots: 2005 Mark Zuckerberg Interview Surfaces Online [Video]

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 21:19 PST, Apr 18, 2016

An open and baby-faced Mark Zuckerberg – with beer in hand – was interviewed back in 2005 about “The Facebook,” which at that time was reserved only for college students.

The video was unearthed by Twitter user Semil and shows the Facebook CEO casually answering questions about what was then dubbed “The Facebook” and its uses.

After asking if he should put the beer down, Zuckerberg relaxes on a sofa, speaking about his exciting new creation.

Zuck can be seen to be barefoot and in shorts, wearing a white T-shirt (not gray) and with red Solo cup of beer in hand. As the camera pans, the video, which dates back to 2005, shows the start-up days of the popular social media platform – somewhat different to the modern Facebook offices of today.

At one stage, Zuckerberg opens a fridge in the office, containing a whole load of beer cans and the occasional can of whipped cream.

As CNET notes, in those days Mark Zuckerberg apparently couldn’t envisage Facebook as it is today. Describing his creation, Zuckerberg explains, “I think Facebook is an online directory for colleges.”

“If I want to look you up or get information about you, I just go to The Facebook and type in your name and it brings up hopefully all the information I’d care to know about you, or a good amount of the information I’d want to know about you.”

The now 31-year-old billionaire, husband, and father then tells what is these days a familiar tale about how The Facebook started during his days at Harvard back in 2004 and then gradually expanded to Columbia, Yale, and Stanford.

Speaking of his location, Zuckerberg says, “Palo Alto is kind of this mythical place where all the start-ups come from.”

Little did he know at that stage how his creation would grow to a platform used by millions of people worldwide.

Reportedly, it was during 2005, Facebook dropped the preceding “The” to its name. During that year, Zuckerberg and his co-workers expanded to launch the platform in more than 150 schools, where students were free to work on developing Facebook.

At another point in the interview, Zuckerberg explains his excitement when one of his co-workers took a trip to Europe and decided to access his own Facebook account from various Internet cafes in the U.K., Ireland and Italy. Reportedly they were amazed to find someone else had already logged onto Facebook from one of those locations.

While today Facebook is an online community with millions of people posting about their lives and businesses advertising, in those days this wasn’t the idea, saying “I think the goal wasn’t to make an online community but a mirror for the real community that exists in real life.”

It is clear from the interview that Zuckerberg wasn’t looking ahead to the mega-corporation Facebook is today as he says, “There doesn’t necessarily have to be more.”

While he has since definitely taken over the world in the social media sphere, he says, “A lot of people are interested in taking over the world. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.”

“There’s a level of service that we could provide when we were just in Harvard and there’s a level of service we can provide when we’re a college network that we wouldn’t be able to provide if we went into other types of things.”

He added that at the time he really just wanted to focus on college and “create a really cool college directory product that is very relevant for students.”

Since this interview, Facebook has, of course, been opened up for use by anyone, anywhere in the world, so long as they’re over 13 years of age. The company went public and began trading on the NASDAQ back in May 2012, and as of December 2015, recorded 1.04 billion daily active users on the social media platform.

Rather than a single college dorm room with a fridge and a few desks, Facebook now has its corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, California along with 14 offices across the U.S.A. and 35 locations elsewhere in the world. As The Verge notes, quite different from what was essentially a “Silicon Valley frat house” in its formative years.

[Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images]

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