I’ve known Tina Kulow since the 1990s. Back then, she was Peter Kabel’s right hand at Kabel New Media, a leading multimedia and internet agency he founded in 1993. Later, she ventured out on her own, founding Kulow Kommunikation, which she led until she joined Facebook. One day in 2008 – after several successful live streams where I interviewed digital icons like Howard Rheingold, Tim O’Reilly, and David Weinberger, and invited audiences to join in and ask their own questions – Tina calls. It’s not your typical call. “Can we do a live stream with Mark Zuckerberg?” she asks. Without missing a beat, I agree. “Of course!” “Great,” she says. “Let me sort out the details.”
At this point, Mark is 23 years old and has just debuted on the Forbes Billionaires list and Facebook is four years old. It’s booming – with more than 100 million users – and it’s already changing the internet as we know it. The platform opened to the public in 2006, requiring just an email to sign up, and by the time I joined in 2007, it was already setting itself apart with the News Feed (2006), the Share button (2006), and the Like button (2007). Facebook had overtaken MySpace and Friendster, claiming its crown as the social media giant.
After a few rounds of planning with Tina and Facebook’s PR team, we lock in the date: Monday, October 6, 2008, from 10:30 to 11:30 AM. Now, we need to figure out the setting. I decide that I don’t want to conduct this interview alone. I ask Markus Beckedahl, the editor-in-chief of netzpolitik.org, and my colleague Dominik Wind from we-magazine, to join me in the room with Zuckerberg. This approach allows us to dive deeper into the conversation while giving me more time to monitor incoming questions from the audience.
I can’t quite recall the exact location, but I know it was in Berlin. We faced quite a few technical challenges – this was back at the very start of live streaming. There were four of us, all in the same room, and our goal was to show each of us individually and as a group on screen for the viewers, we wanted to switch between wide shots and close-ups of each person during the broadcast. To make it work, we chose video conference software – Netviewer. Other ‘standard’ live streaming tools couldn’t handle that. It was a bit of an experiment, with one downside: the recording couldn’t be uploaded to YouTube later, due to Netviewer’s private settings.
The stage is set. Let the show begin.
Tina arrives with Mark and his PR entourage. They are touring Europe. The moment he steps in, it’s clear: Mark Zuckerberg is not like other people. He moves with an odd stiffness, his pale face unreadable, his trademark dark grey T-shirt and black jeans making him look like a programmed avatar rather than a living, breathing human. There’s no warmth, no effort to connect. Instead, an invisible force field surrounds him, a barrier he maintains with an almost unsettling precision. It’s not shyness. It’s not arrogance. It’s something stranger – an absence. Like he’s physically present but mentally operating on a different frequency, removed from the human rhythms of the room.
A clipped, barely audible “hello,” then he sits. No eye contact, no small talk, just an unspoken urgency to get this over with. It feels as if conversation is something foreign to him – an outdated software he never quite bothered to download.
I glance at Dominik and Markus. They sense it, too. Later, we’d all describe the same impression: Zuckerberg doesn’t just keep his distance – he repels, like a magnet flipped the wrong way.
I launch the live stream. The audience is already there, waiting. I keep the intro short—Mark Zuckerberg hardly needs an introduction. I explain the setup: viewers can submit their questions in the chat, I’ll pick the most relevant ones, and the three of us in the room will add our own.
The questions start rolling in – some sharp, some admiring, some skeptical but fair. What sticks with me isn’t the questions themselves, but Mark’s delivery. His responses are mechanical, his face a mask, his tone devoid of emotion. When a topic interests him, he drills down into the details. And adds whatever he wants to add. When he wants to avoid something, he weaves a careful, empty answer that says a lot without saying anything. He is a master of calculated detachment.
Time flies. I barely get a chance to ask my own questions. Tina gives me the signal – it’s time to wrap up. I thank the audience and close the stream. Mark stands up, mutters a quiet “bye,” and is gone before the air in the room can shift. Just like when he walked in. No lingering, no small talk. In and out, like a transaction. And to him, it was likely just exactly that: another transaction.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
I’ve never experienced anything like it. Every livestream and interview I’ve done up until now has been about the content – real conversations, honest dialogue. But this? This was a PR stunt, and Mark? He nailed it. He wasn’t here to have a discussion or to explore ideas. No, he was here to sell, to package his message and control the narrative carefully. Every word was calculated, every response tailored to protect the image. No interest in engaging beyond the surface.
And there we were, three people in the room, naive, green horns. Completely powerless to change the course. We were hosting a performance, not a conversation. We handed him the stage, and he owned it. The frustration was palpable. We gave him the floor, and it felt wrong.
Plain and simple.