5 takeaways from Tuesday's Q&A session with Mark Zuckerberg

This article is more than 12 months old

Apr 15, 2015 09:57 pm

Mark Zuckerberg held an impromptu Q&A session on Facebook on Tuesday (April 14) night.

The co-founder of Facebook invited people to ask "whatever’s on your mind" and said he would answer as many questions as he could.

For the next hour, I’ll be answering your questions here on Facebook about whatever’s on your mind. We’ve held a few...

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, April 14, 2015

During the hour-long session, Mr Zuckerberg took on about 15 questions, two of which were from famous people – singer Shakira and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.

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Here are five interesting takeaways from the session.

1. We're going to see a lot more of Beast.

Who is Beast? It is Mr Zuckerberg's dog.

Here are a few photos of Beast from its Facebook page. (Yes, it has its own account.)

2. If you want to succeed, don't give up.

Yes, yes, we've all heard this piece of advice before.

Mr Omar Gaber was probably hoping for something a little more in-depth. (So were we.)

Guess this old adage still rings true in the digital age.

3. It's okay to make mistakes and sound silly.

He didn't exactly phase it like that.

But the gist of Mr Zuckerberg's answer was that it was okay to mangle the pronunciation of words and make yourself look like a fool when learning a new language.

He wrote: "The one thing I've tried to do is not too self-conscious about my lack of skill."

He added: "If you can just dive in and force yourself to speak -- even if you get a lot of words wrong -- then you'll learn a lot faster."

This advice can be applied to the learning process of any new skill, and is way more helpful than the advice in point No. 2.

4. Even famous people are interested in picking his brains.

Shakira and Mr Branson must be really clued in to social media. The Q&A session was unplanned, but both somehow managed to get their questions up in time.

The duo were focused on the topic of disadvantaged communities getting access to the Internet.