Mark Zuckerberg’s Coming-Out Party for the CBS Generation

For a couple of years now, I’ve been telling my parents about the analyst work I’ve been doing in social networking. Considering that they are retired people living in the middle of Florida, I think they are pretty Internet savvy.

Still, I was surprised to call them at 7:45 on Sunday evening for our weekly chat and hear that they were watching the Mark Zuckerberg interview on 60 Minutes. In fact, my dad didn’t even get on the phone until the interview was over.

There has been a lot of talk about this momentous occasion, and how this was Facebook’s unveiling for the CBS generation. The interview opened with Lesley Stahl setting up her own Facebook page and - amazing! - getting a friend request from an old acquaintance within minutes. The skeptic in me says it was a setup, but who knows.

I think Zuckerberg played the part well - awkward at times, passionate at others, overly mawkish at still others (saying the company needs to make money because it has 400 employees to pay? not the most compelling explanation of their ad strategy).

Will there be a spike in Facebook usage among 50- and 60-somethings? Perhaps. I can’t wait to see what they think of Vampires and SuperPoking. But Scrabulous, well, now that’s a pretty natural fit.