The Lacy/ Zuckerberg SXSW Keynote: A Post of Two Halves

In retrospect my post was overblown, opinionated and full of the exact same mudslinging that made thousands of bloggers turn on Lacy in the first place.

In my defence, I stand by my sense of disappointment at the interview (which was unforgivably shoddy) and can point to the literally thousands of bloggers and microbloggers similarly swept up in the angry melee.

But at the end of the day Sarah Lacy's biggest downfall wasn't a shockingly inept interview, it was the fact she conducted it in front of a tech-savvy crowd with the power and willingness to document and publish her misguided words the very moment they left her mouth.

So here it is then, the blog post that never was. Have a read it and then let me know your opinions of the perils of a PR gaffe in these live-blogging times we live in.

Lacy vs. Zuckerberg: The Ego Has Landed

It's become the Kennedy moment of this year's SXSW interactive festival and the question on everybody's lips is "Where were you during the Mark Zuckerberg keynote speech train wreck?"

I'll tell you where I was. I was on row 37 trying to listen to the whole sorry mess over the sound of several thousand jaws collectively hitting the floor.

It wasn't that we weren't expecting some sort of massive ego trip in an interview featuring the world's youngest billionaire, it was the fact it came from a more unlikely source: the interviewer.

In a weird reversal of status, Mark Zuckerberg, the 23 year-old internet icon behind Facebook, was reduced to a rabbit in the headlights by Business Week reporter Sarah Lacy, a figure so unbelievably conceited that she tried to steal the show from one of the main headliners that most people had travelled (in our case halfway round the world) to see.

Coming across as one part patronising auntie, one part self-publicising diva and one part Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, Lacy flirted, grandstanded and belittled her interviewee through one gob-smacking episode to the next.

From shamelessly plugging her new book (and revelling in the smug insider status she's obviously enjoyed through researching it) to unveiling embarrassing facts and startling inaccuracies about her stage-struck interviewee at a frankly alarming rate, Lacy proved to be a stunningly inept choice for such a landmark interview.

Not that Zuckerberg was particularly stellar himself. Trotting out phrases such as "granular user control" and "connecting people" so many times he sounded like an automaton, the baby-faced CEO displayed all the charisma of a (particularly wealthy) plank.

Even so, one couldn't help thinking that a more competent interviewer could have coaxed a hell of a lot more from Zuckerberg by giving him more of the limelight and actually doing him the courtesy of letting him answer some of the questions that were posed.

To say that the atmosphere turned frosty from the crowd would be the understatement of the century. From shocked gasps of disbelief and multiple hecklers to a raucous applause for Zuckerberg when he started to stand up against his questioner, it was clear that the audience was really not on Lacy's side.

A fact that did not go unnoticed by Lacy herself who accelerated her own downfall by turning on the several thousand-strong audience in an ill-advised hissy fit. Not only did she inform us that we "don't understand how hard her job is" (aw, bless), she made the fatal error of inviting us to explain "why this interview sucked so much". Cue an explosion of bile on the blogosphere and a reputation left in tatters before she even cleared the stage.

Now I'm no Zuckerberg fanboy and I'm increasingly feeling "Facebook fatigue" just like everyone else, but I couldn't help feeling massively short-changed by the interview.

Firstly, despite a certain degree of snobbery around Facebook within the tech community, the fact is that for the average Joe on the street the social network is still a massive phenomenon and one of the few pieces of digital technology that the masses engage with every day. No matter how good we think our own projects may be or that Facebook's success is nothing more than a happy accident, it is a happy accident that continues to engage millions of people so we better sit up and take notice.

Secondly, here is a guy who, at an age when most graduates are still balancing weekend Mcjobs with unpaid work experience, has created a truly global phenomenon and amassed the kind of wealth that buys you a British football team or two. I for one wanted like to know how he did it.

Instead all we got was a self-important Valley girl with a monumental chip on her shoulder and a bewildered kid who couldn't have looked more uncomfortable if his mum had jumped on stage and wiped his nose with her hanky in front of 2000 people.

Sarah Lacy- shame on you.