When Zuckerberg was lost, Steve Jobs told him to go to India. Now he’s going back.
Via Facebook: zuck
Forget hoverboards or heartbeats on your wrist. The biggest tech shift of 2015 is Silicon Valley's landgrab in the developing world — it's the year when Uber raised additional billions just to compete in the Chinese domestic market and Facebook built a Boeing-sized drone to try to beam connectivity down to the 43.4% of the world who are not yet online.
In that context, the sound of Bollywood hits blaring across the social network's Menlo Park headquarters yesterday morning carried a note of portent. The sentimental playlist, including throwbacks from the '90s and late aughts, was background music for the thousand or so guests — mostly Indian or of Indian descent — gathered for a town hall–style Q&A with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Nitasha Tiku / BuzzFeed News
Early Sunday, Hacker Square, an outdoor stretch of the social giant's campus with the word "hack" spelled out in concrete, was abuzz with tech workers in Facebook swag and sneakers who mingled with women in chic salwar kameez, men in Nehru vests over their button-down shirts, and a handful of kids who came with their parents for the historic occasion and couldn't help pointing to the helicopter circling overhead or the translators in their soundproof booths. As the row of TV correspondents in the back told their respective cameras, it's been 33 years since an Indian head of state visited California.
During his two-day tour of tech country, Modi has received the kind of "rock star" reception normally reserved for billionaire CEOs like Elon Musk — who himself gave Modi a personal tour of Tesla. Modi also met with the CEOs of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. On Sunday night, Modi sold out the "Shark Tank," a massive indoor arena in San Jose, where the crowd chanted "Modi" for hours.
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment