Zuckerberg finally explains the grey T-Shirt:
Highlights from the big Facebook Q&A

Social media giant Facebook is known to hold Q&A sessions for its employees, but this time around the company opened its gates for netizens around the world.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted his first ‘community Q&A’ session on November 6 giving the public an opportunity to ask him any question they want. And Zuckerberg was not the only senior management member at the event.  Present along with him were Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.

The questions were really across the board. Ranging from why he wears the same grey hoodie at most public events to forcing people to use Messenger, Zuckerberg answered it all. Here are the five key highlights of his talk.

Forcing users to install Facebook Messenger

Zuckerberg explained why he made Messenger a compulsory download

It wasn’t a surprise when a netizen asked Zuckerberg about why he was forcing people to use the stand-alone Facebook Messenger app. Earlier this year, Facebook started asking users to switch to its standalone messaging app. Zuckerberg’s response was the same as the official line of the company, saying that the only aim was to improve the speed and overall productivity of the apps.

He replied, “The first thing I want to do is acknowledge that asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask. We really believe that this is a better experience and the messaging is really important. Each app can do one thing well.”

Is Facebook becoming boring?

Of late, Facebook has been slammed for not attracting newer audiences, especially teens, who prefer Instagram, Snapchat and other messaging apps instead. Zuckerberg has to field a question related to this as well. When asked about Facebook is getting boring, he said, “It’s an interesting question to me because my goal was never to make Facebook cool. “I am not a cool person.” he further went on to say that a social network should be functional and helpful rather than cool. Looks like, he just skirted the question and the fact that many people believe Facebook is losing its zing or “cool quitient” that we see in arch-rival Snapchat.

Wearing the same T-shirt everyday

Not that same grey T-shirt again!

While Jobs is known for turtle necks, Zuckerberg is known for hoodies and a specific grey T-shirt that he wears at almost all events.

When a curious Internet enthusiast asked about wearing the same T-shirt, many had anticipated a fun reply. However, Zuckerberg quite seriously put it, “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”

He further explained, “I’m in this really lucky position, where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people. And I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.”

Though he did add that Sandberg usually makes fun of his wardrobe, he had multiple T-shirts in the same design and didn’t wear the same one everyday.

Developed Facebook feature that didn’t ever go public

Some curious folks also wanted to know about Facebook features that may have been developed but never made it to users. Zuckerberg spoke about the new timeline in 2013 that didn’t really go down well with initial users forcing the company to ditch it. “At Facebook, we have these big monitors. It gave us a blind spot to the computers most people are using in the world.  The News Feed design cut off the number of stories that one could see on a normal screen. So, the engagement in the beta test dropped drastically and we scrapped the project,” he said.

The movie Social Network was fluff

Most of the movie was fluff and made up, said Zuckerbery of The Social Network

Another question he answered was about the movie around how he build Facebook that went on to win three Oscars – The Social Network. Zuckerberg said that most of the content in the movie was fluff and made up. “I kinda tried to block that one out,” he laughed. “It was a very interesting experience to watch a movie that was supposed to be about my life.”

He further went to explain how some minor details were right, but there was a lot of content that upset him.

“They just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful,” he said. One of the aspects was Zuckerberg started Facebook to get girls, but he said he was already dating Prisilla Chan, now his wife, before he created Facebook. “If somehow I was trying to create Facebook to find more women, that probably would not have gone over too well in my relationship,” he added.