Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (25 page)

I considered it also a personal victory in a few ways. After that show, I had the television broadcast street cred to take more serious meetings in Hollywood. It’s a big deal to get a television show that becomes a series and an even bigger deal if you’re a first-time producer.

Plus, I had done something big and loud and proud that was all my own.

I remember when my colleague Bradley forwarded me a review in which the show had been awarded zero out of five stars. Rather than get angry or disappointed, I started laughing and jumping for joy. But it didn’t have anything to do with the show. It was the very first snippet about me I had ever read that didn’t say “Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister.” Instead, it just said “Randi Zuckerberg, television producer.” To me, that was worth six stars out of five.

I founded Zuckerberg Media on the premise that tech and media needed to work together. San Francisco and L.A. needed to team up, not fight each other. Both worlds have the same goals: delighting users, capturing their attention, and creating brand loyalty for recurring engagement.

But these worlds are also extremely different. Part of the excitement for me is in figuring out how to bridge the two.

It’s tough being a bridge. Collectively, the people on my team have created thousands of hours of television, reached hundreds of millions of people with content on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and worked with dozens of A-list talents, and we’re still trying to prove ourselves. But we’re getting there.

Like any start-up, you launch your product in “beta mode,” listen to feedback, revise like hell, and eventually either do something awesome or run out of money trying. Working at Facebook taught me to move fast and break things, and that sometimes launching is better than being perfect. We launched this show quickly. We worked our butts off. We learned a lot in the process. And we’ll nail it next time.

Whether we do it only online, only on TV, or most likely, a high-quality hybrid of the two, I’m not giving up, especially now. We are here at the vanguard of change in two global industries. And we’re just getting started.

The Internet is an incredible force for good. Vast crowds of helpful people can be mobilized online almost in the blink of an eye.

At the same time, you have to remember that anytime you share, you open yourself up to the judgment of others. Sharing is a wonderful thing. The positives far outweigh the negatives. But make sure you have your thick skin and your big-girl pants on, because people can sometimes be a bit cruel.

The more successful you are and the more you have to say, the more people will be mean to you on the Internet. The only way forward is to embrace your haters. Don’t be afraid of the keyboard cowards. Engage them. I used to get nauseated at the slightest hint of a mean blog post or negative tweet. Now, I try to celebrate them.

Attention is a currency. I often tell any people or organizations that are terrified of negative online comments that “haters are an inch away from loving you.” If someone is taking the time to read something and respond, sometimes all that person wants is to be heard. With effort, you might be able to turn that person into a passionate, local, enthusiastic advocate. And even if you can’t, haters keep you in the conversation. Love me, hate me, but just don’t forget me.

There will always be people who are jealous or afraid, who don’t have the courage, strength, or conviction to make an impact on the world. Don’t let their insecurities and frustrations with their own lives slow you down or affect your day. They are just words on a screen.

Part of tech–life balance is being able to put down the phone, close your laptop, and not take your digital baggage with you. Never believe the online hype. You’re never as awesome as people make you feel online. And you’re never as bad as people make you feel online. The only relationships that really, truly matter are those you have with the people right next to you when you stop text messaging and put your e-mail aside.

It’s often been said that your Facebook profile isn’t the real you, that it’s just the best of you. Let’s change that. Let’s make the real you also the best of you. When you live an authentic life both online and off, strive to be honest. Strive to find personal peace, friendship, love, fulfillment at work, and good in your community, and use the Internet to improve your life, not control it.

Technology gives us the power to change the world. Let’s start by changing ourselves. Let’s make our complicated wired lives a little bit easier, and a lot more wonderful.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A
year after I was asked to get M. C. Hammer a seat at President Obama’s “Facebook Live” town hall, I found myself on a boat on a sunny day on the San Francisco Bay, headed to Oakland with M. C. Hammer himself and one of my investors, Jody Gessow. We were on our way to Jack London Square in Oakland to check out a potential production space for my new venture: Zuckerberg Media.

When going to Oakland, who better to bring along than hometown hero M. C. Hammer? And what better way to go than by boat?

The sun glinted off the choppy waters as we sailed beneath the Bay Bridge.

Hammer turned to me. “Randi,” he said, “I’ve got an idea. We should create a production company together.”

“I love it!” I said. “What do we call it?”

We both fell to musing.

Suddenly it came to me. “Z = MC
2
!” I shouted.

Silence.

That was it. I had just officially out-nerded everyone on the boat. But then Hammer laughed.

As the boat sailed on to Oakland, I caught a glimpse of San Francisco behind me and had one of those terribly poignant personal moments when you sigh and remark to yourself about how strange life is and how quickly everything changes.

Not that long ago I was shoveling snow with my brother and sisters in a Dobbs Ferry cul-de-sac. It felt like just moments ago I was belting my heart out as Peggy in
42nd Street
at Horace Mann and “stopping to smell the flowers” in music class. I remembered singing “Zombie Jamboree” on stage with the Harvard Opportunes at my first concert, and then, in the blink of an eye—four years later—my last. I remembered the Naked Cowboys, Midtown drinks on warm summer Fridays, and getting that BrentT instant message. I remembered the plane ticket to California to work for The Facebook, a teary good-bye with Brent, followed by an even more teary reunion, a love affair, a marriage-by-Outlook invite, and a beautiful blond boy named Asher, whose happy photos fill my Facebook Timeline.

I took my phone out of my pocket and began to flip through photos of Asher, looking for a good one to post. There weren’t any, so I started to photograph my view of San Francisco, but I stopped myself, put the phone away, and turned back to ask Hammer some more questions about Oakland, his career, and his life.

This was no time to be on the phone. There would be time for that later. The little five-ounce communication device I held in my hand was something directly out of
Star Trek.
Always-online smartphones and social media have completely changed the way everyone is interacting. The previously solid boundary lines between friends, lovers, families, work, society, and celebrities are all beginning to blur. Technology seems to be making things both easier and harder at the same time. We have at our disposal incredible communication devices, but we seem to forget how to communicate with one another.

For me, the way out of the mess is understanding something essential about the tools of technology, that they are exactly that: tools—meant to make life better, not worse. And by living an authentic life online, we begin to understand how to use these tools to achieve a proper tech–life balance.

And so, like most stories go, it all comes back to Hammertime.

As M. C. Hammer once said, “You either work hard or you might as well quit.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I plan to keep working hard for as long as I can.

We will all have career highs and lows, money gained and lost. We will have tremendous victories and crippling losses. We will have baby photos, graduation photos, wedding photos, and then . . . baby photos all over again. We will have close friends who disappoint and strangers who delight. But isn’t it that sharing, that vulnerability, that human connection that makes life so wonderfully worth living?

It’s easy to hide behind a screen, a text message, a photo, an e-mail. The hard part is truly getting out there and living your life, being true to yourself and connecting with others. Technology has shown us a new world. But there’s work to be done to make that world a beautiful, hospitable place for our generation and the generations to come.

Work hard. Play hard. Post hard. Tweet hard. But most important, live hard. Because we are way too legit to quit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W
ow! You’ve made it this far! Thank you!

Thank goodness I have more than 140 characters, because there are so many people I am eternally grateful for and indebted to.

Thank you, first and foremost, to my incredible book team at HarperCollins. Mark Tauber, thank you for your perseverance and patience. Gideon Weil, thanks for being a true teammate and extraordinary editor. Lisa Sharkey, thank you for bringing so many creative ideas to the table that I’ve lost count. Margaret Anastas, thank you for embracing both me and Dot so wholeheartedly and lovingly. And thank you to Claudia Boutote, Laina Adler, Suzanne Quist, and Suzanne Wickham, for all the hard work that went into turning my dreams into an actual, physical, printed reality . . . and then making sure everyone knew about it!

Thank you to all the readers of my Dot Complicated newsletter and website. It is because of your support and loyalty that this book was even possible and that I wake up every morning passionate and excited to get to work.

Thank you to my former Facebook colleagues, especially my consumer marketing family: Alex Wu, Aubrey Sabala, Charles Porch, Elliot Schrage, Erin Kanaley-Famularo, Jonathan Ehrlich, Larry Yu, Mandy Zibart, Matt Beaman, Matt Harnack, Matt Hicks, Skip Bronkie, and Tish Stenson. Special shout-outs to Brandee Barker, Meenal Balar, and Raquel DiSabatino, my soul sisters in marketing/comms.

Thank you to the wonderful mentors I’ve had along the way: Dan Rosensweig, Dana Brunetti, Francine Hardaway, Jason Goldberg, Kathy Kennedy, Leslie Blodgett, Mike Murphy, Ray Chambers, Ron Conway, Shari Redstone, Shervin Pishevar, Sheryl Sandberg, and Terry Semel. I have always valued your vision, your honesty, your leadership, and, when needed, your tough love.

Thank you, Andy Mitchell, for giving me one of my biggest career breaks to date. I love our jet-setting friendship, from Florida to Buenos Aires to Brooklyn.

Thank you, Andrew Morse, for being a partner in crime over and over again. One day, we’ll win that Emmy together!

Thank you to the Academy—it was truly an honor to be nominated. ;-)

Thank you, Kevin Colleran, for making that very first Facebook holiday party video with me. I don’t think I’ll ever have as much fun filming anything as we had together. Thanks to everyone who was a good sport about those videos, especially Jeff Rothschild. We did it out of love.

Thank you, Ari Steinberg, Ezra Callahan, Luke Shepherd, Peter Deng, Tom Whitnah, and the all-star engineering team that made those initial amazing politics projects happen. Thank you to Tim Kendall for joining me on air. Thank you to Adam Conner, Andrew Noyes, Chris Kelly, Dan Rose, David Fisch, Denise Trindade, Ethan Beard, Julia Popowitz, and Matt Hicks for your support and friendship. Working with all of you was a true highlight of my career.

Thank you, David Prager, my parody-music-video-making soul brother. Don’t you wish your cell phone was hot like me? ;-)

Thank you to my band, Feedbomb—Chris Pan, David Ebersman, Andy Barton, Bobby Johnson, Eric Zamore, Eric Giovanola, and Sean Chaffin—for continually giving a geeky soccer mom the experience of being a rock star. I adore performing with you and hope we can keep playing together for a long time to come, no matter how many times Chris Pan threatens to quit and move to L.A. Pre-Feedbomb, thank you to Evanescence Essence—Chris Kelly, Bobby Johnson, Chris Cox, and James Wang—for rocking out so hard. Chris Pan would yell at me if I didn’t take this opportunity to say that Feedbomb is available to play at your next wedding or event or conference. ;-)

Thank you to Woody Howard at Horace Mann School for that life-changing role as Peggy Sawyer in
42nd Street
. You truly shaped so much of my life, and my online identity, influencing years of screen names and Internet handles!

Thank you to the Harvard Opportunes—for your beautiful music, and even more important, for the lifelong friendships. You guys are aca-mazing.

Thank you, Yossi Vardi and Michelle Barmazal, for the amazing honor of singing at Shabbat Dinner at Davos. And thank you to Matthias Luefkens, Diana El Azar, and Josette Sheeran for the amazing honor of even setting foot in Davos in the first place.

Thank you, Michelle Myers, Elise Wood, and Bob Sauerberg at Condé Nast and Andy Levey and Lou D’Angeli at Cirque du Soleil, for taking risks on zany ideas that turned out to be amazing.

Thank you to Lauren Zalaznick and Eli Lehrer at Bravo, and to Evan Prager, Jesse Ignjatovic, and the whole crew at Den of Thieves, for giving a TV newcomer her racing stripes.

Thank you to the journalists who have loved me, hated me, and heckled me throughout the past years—special thanks to Kara Swisher, Ken Yeung, Liz Gannes, and Owen Thomas for always encouraging me to belt my heart out.

Thank you to so many amazing “wired” women who have helped and inspired me throughout my journey: Abby Ross, Ali Pincus, Ann Brady, Anne Fulenwider, Angelina Haole, Arianna Huffington, Brit Morin, Cathy Brooks, Desiree Gruber, Elizabeth Weil, Farzana Farzam, Hasti Kashfia, Hillary Frank, Jennifer Aaker, Jennifer Lima, Jessica Melore, Johanna Argan, Julia Allison, Julia Popowitz, Julie Vaughn, Kara Goldin, Katherine Barr, Kirsten Green, Lea Goldman, Libby Leffler, Melissa Sobel, Porter Gale, Rachel Sklar, Renata Quintini, Sarah Ross, Sarah Kunst, Sarah Lefton, Shira Lazar, Sophia Rossi, Stephanie Agresta, Susan Lyne, Tina Seelig, Tina Sharkey, Ty Texidor—the list just goes on and on. This is truly our time, ladies!

Thank you to Soleil Moon Frye for walking me through the whole book process and always being so open and honest about everything—I honestly think of you as a soul sister.

Thank you to Nicole Lapin, both for housing me in NYC so many times, so I could work on this book, and for constantly pushing for me to be on-air, before anybody really cared. You have always been such an incredible champion, I don’t know how I can ever repay your amazing kindness and generosity.

Thank you to Erin Kanaley for being such an awesome sidekick and partner in crime for so many years. We had some crazy adventures, girl, didn’t we?

Thank you to Peter Jacobs, Amie Yavor, Zach Nadler, Tiffany Chi, and the CAA speaking team for sending me to so many random parts of the world over the past few years to speak. It was during those twenty-four-hour trips to New Zealand, Oman, and Vorbeck, Germany, that the idea for
Dot Complicated
was born, and my United Global Services status accrued. . . .

Special thanks to the übertalented agents at William Morris Endeavor, Jay Mandel, Margaret Riley, Bethany Dick, Miles Gidaly, and Mark Mullet. Can’t wait to do amazing things together in the coming years.

Thank you to the incredible team at JonesWorks PR, especially Stephanie Jones, Emily Hofstetter, and Kirby Allison. #awesome #rockstars #trekkingthroughpigpens

A very special thank-you to my good friend Dex Torricke-Barton, one of Silicon Valley’s best-kept secrets, for the constant support throughout the writing process. This book wouldn’t have been possible without you. I also want to thank Matthew Miller for contributing great ideas and research.

Thank you to the entire Zuckerberg Media team—past, present, and future—Ashmi Pathela, Bradley Lautenbach, Elvina Beck, Emma Paye, Erin Kanaley-Famularo, Holly Leonard, Jeff Paik, Liz Wassmann, Matt Hicks, Niloofar Mansourian, Monica Chambers, Nate Hess, and Ross Siegel. Many, many thanks to all our wonderful investors who have supported our journey.

Thank you to Jeff Paik for always being there for me. From sociology term papers to clearing out dorm rooms, Barbies and all, to dressing in music note caps and singing in the T station, it’s been an honor having you by my side.

Thank you to Bradley Lautenbach, my partner since back at the ABC News–Facebook debate! Six awesome years working together and counting. Every single day, I thank my lucky stars that we work together.

Thank you to the most incredible “urban family” a girl could ask for—Chris Kelly, Jen Carrico, Gregg Delman, Becca Schapiro, Kim Lembo, Shari and Jesse Flowers, Rachel Masters, Margot Kaminski, Eric “EZ” Zawid, and Alex and Reina Rampell—we have been together through the good and the bad, the epically wonderful and the truly hideous. From Mexican-themed seders to Jersey Shore–themed going-away parties, crazy Vegas getaways to even crazier Tokyo getaways, toddlers to tiaras, you guys are truly the family you choose.

Thank you to my amazing and supportive real-life family. Edward, Karen, Mark, Donna, and Arielle Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Harry and Jonah Schmidt, Marla and Eron Tworetzky, Grandma Gert, Beast and Luna, and all my extended family in Florida, California, Pennsylvania, and beyond—I am so grateful for your love and support. You have cooked for me, employed me, invested in me (both figuratively and literally), dressed up in Star Wars costumes for me, cheered for me, supported my dreams, and put up with so many of my zany ideas and schemes over the years. I truly wish my grandparents Miriam, Jack, and Sidney could have been here to see me realize my dream of becoming a published author, but I know that they are with me in spirit.

Because even saying thank you twice isn’t enough, a heartfelt thank-you to my incredible parents, Edward and Karen Zuckerberg. All those notes in my lunch boxes, those cheers from the front row at countless plays and concerts, those hours in the car—you have always been there for me, always supportive, always loving. You have given me so much, and I am so eternally grateful. Seeing your love extend to my son is the most precious gift you have given me by far.

Thank you to my beautiful son, Asher, who has taught me so many profound and valuable life lessons at such an early age. I hope you never lose your spirit, your zest for life, your desire to sing, your love of Booney (okay, maybe I won’t be crushed if you lose that)—and may you always live up to the meaning of your name, full of joy and blessings.

And of course, the biggest thank-you of all goes to Brent Tworetzky. A loving husband, a wonderful father, and my very best friend. In the wise words of Toto, “I bless the rains down in Africa” for you, every single day.

#yay #yourestillreading #thanks #ihearthashtags #icanhazhashtag #peopleoverusehashtags #waytoomuch #doesanybodyactuallyread these #whyareyoustillreadingthese #whoooooo #springbreak #himom #hiharpercollins #wordcountfiller #yayihitmywordcount #idliketothanktheacademy #pulitzerprize