Edible Apple

Apple and Facebook have been known to butt heads at the negotiation table but that never stopped Apple co-founder Steve Jobs from dispensing some sage advice to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In an interview set to air tonight with Charlie Rose, ZUckerberg explains the extent to which Jobs helped Facebook remain focused on its core mission.

Mark Zuckerberg: Oh, I don’t know. I mean, he — he’s amazing. He was amazing. I mean, he — I had a lot of questions for him on –

Charlie Rose: Like what?

Mark Zuckerberg: How to build a team around you, right, that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are. How to keep an organization focused, right, when I think the tendency for larger companies is to try to fray and go into all these different areas. Yeah, I mean a lot just on the aesthetics and kind of mission orientation of companies. I mean, Apple is a company that is so focused on just building products that — for their customers and their users. And — and that’s like — it’s such a deep part of their mission is build these beautiful products for their users. And I think we connected a lot on this level of, okay, Facebook has this mission that’s really more than just trying to build a company, right, that has a market cap or a value. It’s like we’re trying to do this thing in the world. And I don’t know, a lot of it I just think we connected on that level.

You might remember that Jobs offered similar advice to Google CEO Larry Page when he ascended to the CEO position. Jobs told Page that Google’s products and services were all over the map and that company needed to focus on a few core initiatives at the risk of turning into Microsoft. If Google doesn’t figure out what it’s all about, Jobs warned, it’ll churn out products that are adequate but not great.

Sound advice for us all.

via All Things D