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.”
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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