Set to air tonight on PBS’s Charlie Rose, Facebook CEO discusses the influence of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. While is was reported that Apple and Facebook were battling, notoriously over Ping in the iTunes store, and deep Twitter integration with iOS5, the Zuck sets the record straight. There were no issues with Apple, Zuckerburg states. Instead, he says in the Charlie Rose show that Steve Jobs was a mentor to him — similar as Jobs was a mentor to Google’s Larry Page. Zuckerberg asked Steve how to best establish great teams to create killer products and how to be focused. The Facebook founder called Steve “Amazing… I had a lot of question for him.” Charlie Rose asked “Like what?”
Zuckerberg responds: “How to build a team around you, right, that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are. How to keep an organization focused, right, when I think the tendency for larger companies is to try to fray and go into all these different areas. Yeah, I mean a lot just on the aesthetics and kind of mission orientation of companies. I mean, Apple is a company that is so focused on just building products that — for their customers and their users. And — and that’s like — it’s such a deep part of their mission is build these beautiful products for their users. And I think we connected a lot on this level of, okay, Facebook has this mission that’s really more than just trying to build a company, right, that has a market cap or a value. It’s like we’re trying to do this thing in the world. And I don’t know, a lot of it I just think we connected on that level.”
Jobs and Zuckerberg also talked about “the aesthetics and kind of mission orientation of companies.” Zuckerberg also says he has respect for Apple because, like Facebook, it is out to build a company that will change the world rather than fatten the bottom line.