CEO MARK ZUCKERBERG'S AUDACIOUS BID TO REWIRE THE APP ECONOMY--AND MAKE HIS SOCIAL NETWORK MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER.

BY AUSTIN CARR AND WITH ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MARK WILSON in San Francisco like a politician working a pancake breakfast.

As the Facebook CEO makes the rounds at f8, the company's daylong developer conference, it is clear that he is among his people. Fifteen hundred hackers have amassed, the first time Zuck has called this flock together in two and a half years. They're here to attend engineering sessions about how to build, grow, and monetize their apps; to munch on plastic-wrapped sandwiches trucked up from Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters; and to try to catch a glimpse of Zuck casually hanging out by the Oculus Rift demo, a sight even more surreal for them than the virtual-reality experience itself. Despite the stuffy heat--the 125,000-square-foot space doesn't have air-conditioning, so Facebook had to import its own ventilation ducts, which hum along the wooden ceilings--Zuck looks cool and relaxed in his T-shirt and jeans. He walks tall, chest out firmly, and with each quick hello he leaves a trail of starstruck smiles and excited whispers in his wake, as if Harry Styles were strolling through a suburban shopping mall. As one beaming attendee says after shaking hands with the CEO, "He seems prettyF-----confident!"

 

Full Article