Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (5 page)

In true Facebook–Silicon Valley spirit, a random late-night conversation with two engineers had turned into a real product in record time.

But there was more work to be done.

A week away from the inauguration, I was on my daily phone call with Andy, discussing how the app would be used on the day, on-air. CNN wanted to fly one of their anchors out to California to cover the inauguration from Facebook HQ, a Silicon Valley political correspondent who could discuss the topics buzzing on social media and the online reaction to the big day. They were having some trouble finding the right person, though—someone who “got” social media, was young enough to appeal to a youth audience, was old enough to be taken seriously, and was approachable on camera.

I made some sympathetic noises down the phone. Someone like that would be tough to find.

“Want to do it?” Andy asked casually.

I paused. “What?”

I could literally feel my heart pounding. The limelight-loving theater geek in me wanted to scream, “
Yes!
Oh God, yes!” but I was scared that my colleagues would think I purposefully orchestrated this to get attention. I asked Andy to give me a bit of time to think about it and run it by a few people. He agreed but asked if he could still float my name past his bosses to get their reaction, as time was short.

I paced around the office while I considered my options. I thought about being back in New York, during those early days after college. I thought about the long days and nights at Ogilvy. I thought about that first trip to visit Mark in California and seeing that handful of engineers coding in the dark living room. I thought about all the silly videos I’d made and how much I loved being in front of the camera. And then I thought about all the different projects I’d worked on in the past four years at Facebook, up until this election platform.

It was insane that it had come to this: me, on television, talking about technology and politics in front of a live audience of millions. It’s one thing to spend a minute laughing and bantering as a program filler. It’s another to play the pundit. I thought I had given up on my TV/theater dreams when I chose to pursue marketing. And now here I was, with the chance of a lifetime being dropped right into my lap. The amount that I wanted this to work out terrified me, because it forced me to come face-to-face with a part of my identity I realized I would never be able to fully silence. I loved the idea of being in
front
of the cameras.

I was terrified of what allowing myself to love that would do, or mean, for my career. But I knew I’d never be happy just being behind the scenes, just being someone’s sister.

Andy called back. “The producers love the idea of you doing the show. Are you in?” I had received the go-ahead from Brandee Barker, Facebook’s PR director, and it was time to seize the incredible career opportunity before me.

“I’m in.”

The evening before, I had had a flashback of a childhood memory. I was in fourth grade and it was during Operation Desert Storm. Our classroom was covered in yellow ribbons and you could hear CNN playing from every television set in our neighborhood. One night during dinner, my mom asked me if I knew what was happening on the news. I said no. She said that she was disappointed in me and that staying up with current events was a very important life skill. I was so desperate to change her opinion of my being uninformed that I didn’t leave the living room for the next three days, as I watched CNN and took copious notes.

As this memory came rushing back, I picked up the phone and dialed my mom in Westchester, New York. “See, Mom. I am up on current events. I
am
the current events,” I said.

“Huh?” She clearly had no idea what I was talking about, almost twenty years later, but it didn’t matter. She wished me good luck and I attempted to get some sleep, knowing that with all the nerves and excitement, sleep was a distant possibility.

On Inauguration Day, I arrived at the Facebook office at 2:30
A.M.
I was there for my first on-air segment of the day, at
3:00 A.M.
Pacific time/
6:00 A.M.
Eastern time. Wearing a pin-striped suit with a silk blouse, I was decidedly
not
Silicon Valley. But luckily, the scene at the office felt familiar and energizing. Even at that ungodly, antisocial hour, the place was humming with activity. Many engineers were still there from the evening before.

Laura Barnes, a Facebook executive assistant who used to work for MAC Cosmetics, was cheerily waiting to do my makeup. Jeff Rothschild, a senior executive on the engineering team, had set up a “war room” with a technical team who would ensure that Facebook remained up and running, even while millions of people simultaneously streamed hours of live video. Engineers Tom Whitnah and Luke Shepherd were troubleshooting with CNN’s team. Tim Kendall, from the ads team, and the first person I would be interviewing on-air, was going over a few talking points for our segment. And there were all sorts of other people from the Facebook and CNN teams scurrying around and making the broadcast work.

At 3:00
A.M.
on the dot, they counted me down.

I can’t remember what I said during that first segment. I have a feeling it was a total train wreck. I didn’t know how to hold the microphone, and I was distracted by people talking into my earpiece while I was supposed to be delivering the news. Apparently, this whole “national correspondent” thing was way harder than it looked. I assumed they were going to cancel the rest of my segments.

They didn’t. I kept going. And as the day went on, I grew more confident. When they asked me to talk on the fly for longer, I was able to conjure up interesting filler remarks. I bantered with all the big-name correspondents, and I liked it. And even when my earpiece malfunctioned at one point, I still managed to roll with it. I even announced some breaking news, when Senator Ted Kennedy collapsed during the inauguration. I broke the news on Facebook before many of the other anchors had it.

When the day ended, I was exhilarated and euphoric. I hadn’t screwed up! Best of all, we had achieved twenty-six million concurrent video streams through our system, and CNN had captured four times as many viewers as the other networks, which they attributed to their integration with Facebook.

Later that week, at Facebook’s monthly all-staff meeting, my team was asked to stand by Chris Cox, VP of product, and the entire company gave us a standing ovation.

That’s the thing about working on the unsexy project. The sexy projects usually have tons of cooks in the kitchen, lots of people standing ready to take credit. But when an unsexy project goes well, it’s usually pretty obvious who’s responsible for the success. My tremendous investment had paid off. I can still remember exactly how it felt standing up in front of the entire company as Chris said, “This project was Facebook at its best. It was a win for Facebook, a win for CNN, and a win for President Obama.” After a year and a half of hard work, my idea had become the shiny, new thing.

When this election cycle had begun, almost all of the pundits were questioning whether social media had a meaningful role to play in politics, either in the way news was reported or in the way voters participated in the campaigns. Up until then, they had a point. Many of the social media and online tie-ins that broadcasters had tried previously had been novelties, failures, or both. Even our own Election Day microsite had fallen into that category. But we had shown convincingly that social media provides real value for broadcasters and viewers. We had demonstrated the power of combining on-air and online during the debates. And we facilitated the first truly social presidential inauguration.

We had done more than just provide a good model for the media industry. We had shown how innovation and politics could go hand in hand. We had proved that technology, when combined with broadcast television, could become a potent and entirely new force for engaging and mobilizing voters. After the election, as analysts began to examine why Obama’s campaign had been so phenomenally successful, particularly with energizing the youth vote, social media and the Internet were largely credited for his success. And Facebook’s efforts with the U.S. Politics app, the debates, our politician profiles, and more, were always mentioned in those analyses.

Through this foray into the unknown, I had found a new career path—part product manager, part producer, part hacker, and part television correspondent. And from that day in January 2009, my life began to quickly move in a new direction.

This Book Isn’t for the Techies—It’s for You

And so we return to the beginning of my end at Facebook, in the entrance hall of my house in April 2011 with Mark and his dog, Beast.

“Are you sure you want to leave?”

“Yes.”

I don’t know what I expected him to say. Maybe I expected him to have some heartfelt response to my leaving after six years or my pouring out my heart to him about my passion to disrupt the media industry.

Instead, Mark remained as infuriatingly and lovably logical as he always is. “Why do you need to do this right now? You’re about to have your baby. Take your maternity leave first and think about what you want to do.”

Maybe it was the relief of being done with the Obama town hall or of getting my feelings off my chest with Mark. Or maybe it was the stress of what I had just lived through and pulled off. But whatever it was, the next morning—three weeks early—I went into labor with my son, Asher.

I was so sleep deprived for the next few weeks, I could barely even remember my own name, let alone think about career plans. But just a few weeks later, during one of my first solo outings out of the house post delivery (to Target—where else?), I received a phone call from Andrew Morse at ABC News.

“Randi, congratulations! You got an
Emmy
nomination for your political coverage.”

There was no turning back.

After six years, which felt more like six lifetimes, I left Facebook.

To this day, people often ask me if I miss working at Facebook. Of course I do. But really, I miss a moment in time. My time at Facebook was like a wonderful vacation that can never be re-created or repeated and for which I’m forever nostalgic. There are a lot of things I miss about Facebook, but in particular, those early days were very special. I imagine most people working at start-ups feel that way, which is why it’s so easy to catch the entrepreneurial bug in Silicon Valley. There’s absolutely nothing like being part of a brand-new company, when you have no idea where the future will take you, when you can feel the energy pulsing off the walls, and you know that no matter where the road leads, you’ll always feel connected to the people who are on that journey with you.

Immediately after leaving, I embarked on a yearlong speaking tour, during which I connected with people all over the world. It was refreshing and exciting after being in the Silicon Valley bubble for so long. I spoke extensively about my involvement at the intersection of tech and media. I outlined future trends in marketing. I dropped buzzwords like “social,” “local,” and “mobile” that audiences expected to hear, while also making sure to impart real, relatable advice.

One thing that really blew me away was that no matter where in the world I went, no matter what topic I was speaking about, everyone came up to me with the same, highly personal questions: How can I find out what my children are doing online? How can I ensure that I won’t lose my job to someone younger and more tech savvy? How can I create a personal brand online to stand out more? How can I get my husband to stop using his iPad in bed?

And that’s when I realized my calling. I had always been the “storyteller” inside Facebook—the one evangelizing how we can’t forget that there are humans on the other side of the code, the visible spokesperson highlighting how Facebook was being used around the world to improve and enrich people’s lives in exciting and unique ways.

Ironically, these same tools that delight people and create endless social and economic opportunity also keep us up all night and give us ulcers. In my year traveling and speaking, I realized that there are millions of people around the world who, although daily users of these technologies, feel overwhelmed, insecure, and confused about how these technologies are changing their lives, their families, and their careers.

I even saw in my own life that I was having difficulty balancing tech and non-tech moments. People talk a lot about work–life balance, but in today’s society it’s really more an issue of tech–life balance. As an entrepreneur, traveling the world speaking, while also trying to stay connected to my family, my friends, and my team, I reached a point when rather than owning a computer, a phone, and a tablet, those devices were owning me. I felt so much pressure to be always “on,” always connected, that by the time I looked up, a year later, I had traveled to twenty-five different countries, made hundreds of new friends and business contacts, built a production studio, and launched a business. But somewhere in there I had forgotten to actually
live
my life without a device attached to my hand. I had forgotten how to just unplug and enjoy the company of those around me. I had forgotten how to be present in the moment.

So I set out on a mission: I wanted to help untangle all of our wired, wonderful lives.

Modern life is complicated. Keeping up with the latest apps, websites, tools, and gadgets is overwhelming. Parenting in the digital age may make you want to rip the hair out of your head. Navigating our professional lives, our love lives, our friendships, in an age where every action is public and documented, is confusing at best and career-ending at worst. But it doesn’t have to be. Tech can fill our lives with meaning, rather than fear. Connecting to others can be empowering, rather than overwhelming. The gray zones can become areas of opportunity, rather than insecurity.

The Internet, social networks, and smartphones have given us amazing new tools and ways of communicating, collaborating, and living with one another. We can use those things to achieve change in our lives, relationships, careers, and communities. We can help redefine and revitalize art, culture, and entertainment. We can find balance and rediscover what it means to live in the moment. And we can use new technology to understand and solve some very old challenges that individuals and communities around the world have faced since long before Facebook, or anything like it, existed.