Zuckerberg: “Finally, I think there's also some distinction between me and the company here. While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation.”
Does he really think he’s better known than, say, Lebron James or Lionel Messi?
Yes, I think he is. And I don’t think his claim is unreasonable. I have heard of Lebron and Messi, but haven’t seen either of them play. Ever. Lebron is Basketball, and I’m pretty sure Messi is soccer, but I only know that because the latter came up in conversations about Apple buying sports rights. I would say there are more people engaging with Instagram and Facebook than there are with basketball.
I get what you’re saying, but I think it’s a limited viewpoint, just as mine is.
Out of those three, Messi is one of the most famous players in the most popular sport in the world (that Americans don't really follow, for some reason). Lebron does something that's popular in the US, but I didn't really recognize him. Zuckerberg is well known among those who follow business news, but he has little visibility in everyday life.
If you restrict the audience to Americans, we can use this YouGov survey: https://today.yougov.com/ratings/international/fame/all-time... The most famous millennial is currently either Beyonce (#6, a borderline millennial) or Taylor Swift (#14). Zuckerberg is well behind them at #99.
I'm pretty confident more people know Messi globally than Zuckerberg and Thiel combined. He is the greatest sportsperson of this generation. You might be living in a bubble.
>He is the greatest sportsperson of this generation.
Had Messi not joined the US league and Apple bought the right I would not be surprised if half of the Americans dont know him. There also plenty of people around the world who simply dont watch Football, at least actively.
Close to 1.5B, according to FIFA, I could not find any independent estimations. But what's 500m among friends.
I just asked two people not in tech >60 who Zuckerberg is and they both knew him. But, I mean, they still read the newspaper, so I guess they're out of touch, as well.
Yeah ok, anecdotally and I just asked my dad who never watched a football match in his life but uses facebook daily if he knew them and he only new Messi.
Depends on where you live, in Europe Messi is very well known for example, Lebron I've never heard of, Zuckerberg is known by people in tech and maybe some others.
I'd bet on some singer or actor / actress being the most well known globally.
There's always a possibility that it's some Chinese / Indian person that is completely unknown outside their own country, but because of that country's size still ends up "the most well-known"
The number of users of Meta products is one thing, Zuckerberg’s personal fame is another.
Conflating the two would imply that, for example, Phil Knight is one of the best known people in the world because of the ubiquity of his company, Nike. That’s obviously not the case.
Based on this email, Zuckerberg seems to have an exaggerated sense of just how well-known he personally is.
An entire Sorkin movie was about Zuck and I've seen him on the front page of the BBC, NHK, as well as in major Chinese and Indian media many, many times. I've seen Messi a few times and I'm not sure if I've ever seen Lebron on them.
Zuck's name recognition isn't yet at the Bill Gates or Taylor Swift level, but he's already beyond what even top athletes of the current generation can hope for.
This is one of those comments where I really have to remember what site I'm on. "Engaging with Meta apps" has nothing to do with knowing who Mark Zuckerberg is, the average WhatsApp user globally is far more familiar with Messi than Zuck.
> I would say there are more people engaging with Instagram and Facebook than there are with basketball.
Sure, but I don't see how that equates to more people knowing about Zuck. Lots of Meta users neither know nor care who he is. Outside of business and tech I almost never see his name or face pop up.
Lebron on the other hand is all over the place. I have zero interest in the NBA but could easily pick him out of a lineup.
In Europe, LeBron is definitely not a household name. Maybe if you are into sports. Ronaldo and Messi on the other hand, are someone most people will know.
It's really regional. Where I live, baseball is the primary sport and basketball (primarily NBA) is a distant second. Many but considerably less than half of young people know who Messi is but only because he just won a world cup and even that memory is fading fast since most people didn't watch it. You'd struggle to find anyone under 60 who hadn't heard of Zuck.
That’s the US perspective. But globally the final of the World Cup (which Messi played) was seen by more than 1.5B people (compared to <200M in the Super Bowl). It is a big name.
No, it's not. Did you really think baseball was the most popular sport in America? I was talking about where I live (Taiwan).
Also, it's a safe bet that more than 1.5 billion people just between India and China have heard of Zuck given how often he's been front page media in both countries.
> I remember playing JRPGs late into the night growing up and reading GamePro magazine.
From another of your comments, it sounds like you're middle class. Or, at least, a working class American which is quite privileged from a global standpoint.
Either way, you're hardly a representative sample of one (1).
>Does he really think he’s better known than, say, Lebron James or Lionel Messi?
Depends. There are lots of people who aren't into Basketball or Football. But there are ~3B user who uses Facebook and Instagram. Technology has such a wide reach these days I would not be surprised if he is better known.
I think Bill Gate and Steve Jobs are pretty well known, even in my circle of people who dont even know what a CPU is. Nearly everyone who uses an iPhone know or have at least heard of Steve Jobs.
Although arguably Mark Zuckerberg dont get as much press as them.
A charitable reading of this would be that he means this within the scope of Facebook itself. In the preceding paragraph he talking about Facebook being built by millennials and it's utility, product evolution and comms reflecting their life changes, so it's possible he is talking about how to separate himself out from it's evolution in that direction so people just don't think "facebook is doing this thing because zuck is getting older" and instead see it as a reflection of the journey of the people that build the company.
But I dunno, he may just actually believe he's the most famous millennial ever. He's up there but I don't know how one could ever quantify that.
The hubris of thinking you're representative of the world.
I think there's a better chance of Messi being known because there's more people in Europe and Latin America that are fans of football than corporations. Even Africa, soccer is quite a popular sport.
Now, for Asia, I'm not sure. That's where the game would be played.
In a lot of ways when these people say "the world" they mean the subset of people they actually care about. Mostly, US Americans and perhaps Canadians.
I think it’s odd to assume that people in Europe, Latin America, and Africa wouldn’t know who the creator of Facebook is, like he’s some obscure figure only known to G7 countries and tech enthusiasts.
I think the biggest revelation is that he says he's the most famous of his generation, not "one of the most famous". That says a lot about his personality. Has anyone ever asked him if he's a narcissist?
I could believe that a lot of people under 20 would not know who Zuckerberg is at all, but definitely know who Messi is, if we are talking outside of the USA. Cristiano Ronaldo would be another.
As expected, Biden and Trump as presidential candidates and former POTUS are better known. Messi has way better recognition than Lebron worldwide owing to soccer's broader appeal and popularity.
Search interest obviously isn't a direct correlation to name recognition - you can have recognition and no one is interested in you - but I'd say it's far more likely that people know who Lionel Messi is considering he won the World Cup in a spectacular fashion and 1.5B people watched the world cup live & I'm sure more than that many people heard about it.
I know who Lionel Messi is, and I read the article that he walks better than other people run (he walks to the right place, while they run to the wrong place). But, what do you mean he won the World Cup in a spectacular fashion? Link to a video of that?
Does he really think he’s better known than, say, Lebron James or Lionel Messi?