扎克伯格密友担纲主演Facebook路演大戏

    本周，Facebook IPO路演正在如火如荼地进行，不过，绝大部分读者都肯定无缘目睹马克•扎克伯格的精彩推销。本次路演只对少数特权派开放——投资银行家及其高端客户，这些人将能以发行价购入Facebook股票。

    对其余人来说——至少是对此事关注的人——仍有一个好消息，现在Facebook的路演视频已经出炉，大家可以先睹为快。

    我一般不推荐去看IPO路演视频。它们只是一些枯燥无味的陈述，随着幻灯片的翻过，首席执行官和首席财务官开始喋喋不休地阐述公司业务。不过，Facebook的路演视频完全不同。这部仅有31分钟的电影制作非常精美，兼具谷歌（Google）超级碗广告的制作精良与苹果（Apple）产品介绍的精心策划。

    不过，影片中的主讲人并非扎克伯格，他只是很好（但有些乏味）地总结了Facebook的历史、解读Facebook的使命，并描述了其产品。扎克伯格的代理人、对Facebook广告业务了解甚多的首席运营官雪莉•桑德博格也不是主讲人，虽然她对演说可谓轻车熟路。（当然，“聪明伶俐”的Facebook首席财务官戴维•伊斯博曼也不是合适人选，虽然他谈起商业运作来滔滔不绝，但想必没人愿意首席财务官在路演影片中大出风头。）

    影片的主角是Facebook产品副总裁克里斯•考克斯。考克斯现年29岁，是扎克伯格长期的心腹，2005年时放弃了斯坦福大学（Stanford）的研究生课程，毅然加入Facebook，他是Facebook的终极说客。科技界记者对考克斯颇为熟悉，他曾多次接受有关产品推介的采访，而对于参加过Facebook年度F8大会的开发者而言，考克斯想必也已耳熟能详。不过，对于外界而言，考克斯仍是神秘人物，但现在，他马上就要出名了。

    在影片中，考克斯和扎克伯格联袂介绍了Facebook的产品和平台。此举非常明智。考克斯弥补了扎克伯格的不足，并推动影片向前发展。考克斯非常轻松而扎克伯克稍显呆板；考克斯收放自如而扎克伯克有点照本宣科；考克斯充满激情而扎克伯格有些局促。Facebook的时间轴显示在屏幕上，上面布满了可爱的宝宝照片，以及纪录小朋友蹒跚学步的视频。考克斯在一旁解说道：“您的生活非常有意思，如果您把它讲述出来，许多人都会非常感兴趣。每个人都有自己的故事。”

    乔布斯以用辞扩张著称，而考克斯颇有其风范，大家预计他可能会在本周的实地路演中露面。我曾试图统计考克斯在影片中究竟说了多少次“令人惊讶的”，不过最终被“非常好的”、“有趣的”、“难以置信的”等其它类似词语打断。考克斯既具有乔布斯式的雄辩，又有着雷鬼乐团成员的调皮笑容，以踩着RipStick滑板在Facebook总部飞奔而闻名（RipStick是一种奇特设备，我的同事杰西•亨佩尔称其为“一种更酷的滑板”）。

    The Facebook IPO roadshow is in full swing this week, but most readers will not get a chance to see Mark Zuckerberg pitch his company. The roadshow is reserved for the privileged few -- investment bankers and their well-heeled clients who will get a shot at buying Facebook shares at the offering price.

    Good thing, then, that for the rest of us -- at least those of us who care -- there's the video version of the roadshow.

    Now, I would not normally recommend watching an IPO video roadshow. They tend to be dreadfully dull presentations where CEOs and CFOs drone on about their businesses as PowerPoint slideshows flip through chart after chart. Facebook's video roadshow is an entirely different thing, though. It's a slick, 31-minute movie that mixes the production qualities of, say, a Google (GOOG) Super Bowl ad with the careful choreography of an Apple (AAPL) product introduction.

    But the master pitchman in this movie is not Zuckerberg, who does a good, if pedestrian, job of summarizing Facebook's history, explaining its mission and describing its products. And it is not even his deputy, COO Sheryl Sandberg, an exceedingly accomplished presenter, who details Facebook's ad business. (And no, it is not Facebook's whip-smart CFO, David Ebersman, who talks up the business -- but then again, you weren't expecting a CFO to steal the show.)

    The star of this show is Chris Cox, Facebook's VP of product. A longtime Zuckerberg confidant who dropped out of a graduate program at Stanford to join Facebook in 2005, Cox, who is 29, is Facebook's ultimate storyteller. He is an already a familiar face to the tech reporters who cover product introductions and to the developers who attend Facebook's annual F8 conference. While he is largely unknown in the outside world, that's about to change.

    In this movie, Facebook's paired him up with Zuckerberg to explain product and platform. It's a smart move. Cox balances out Zuck and keeps the presentation moving along. He is as loose as Zuck is stiff, as spontaneous as Zuck is scripted, as passionate as Zuck is restrained. "Your life is an amazing story that a lot of people would be interested in if you told it," Cox says, as Facebook timelines scroll on the screen replete with cute baby pictures and the video of a toddler taking his first steps. "And each person has a story," he adds.

    Cox, who is expected to be part of the real-live roadshow this week, has a Jobsian penchant for hyperbole. I tried to count the times he said "amazing" in the video but I got distracted by the similarly frequent "immense" and "interesting" and "incredible." And he mixes the eloquence of a Jobs, with the mischievous grin of a guy who plays in a reggae band and is known to zoom around Facebook headquarters on a RipStick (a contraption that my colleague Jessi Hempel described as "a skateboard but cooler.")