Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is a phenomenal public speaker, as she showed again last night during a Fortune Brainstorm Tech interview in New York City. Smooth, funny, self-deprecating, funny and able to deftly sidestep thorny questions. So perhaps I’m just an incurable critic, but it was strange to hear her cognitive dissonance when asked about competition.
First came a question about Ello, the upstart social network that seems to be billing itself as the anti-Facebook. No ads, no selling of user data. Sandberg’s reply was so dismissive that I almost expected her to throw in a pffft or pretend to brush dust off her shoulder. Take a look:
That’s right, Sandberg has so little concern about Ello — and is so focused on Facebook’s core mission — that she hasn’t even looked at it. Okay, but how does that square with what she said just a short time later, when asked about competition:
“The Silicon Valley answer is always the person in the garage you haven’t met yet who’s building something new.”
“The Silicon Valley answer is always the person in the garage you haven’t met yet who’s building something new.”
Well, couldn’t Ello be that garage-dweller? And, if so, shouldn’t Facebook’s (FB) COO at least have taken a cursory glance by now?
To be clear, I’m not saying Ello is or isn’t a legitimate Facebook rival. But I do know that I’ve already taken a look, and I have much less reason to do so than does Sandberg…
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