What Advice Did Steve Jobs Give to Mark Zuckerberg?

Mark Zuckerberg says he asked Steve Jobs about how to build a high-quality team and great products, but denies Apple and Facebook ever talked about an acquisition.

The revelations come as part of an in-depth interview between PBS’s Charlie Rose and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. The extensive interview covers all of the bases, such as whether Facebook will ever build games (no, Zuck says) and what Zuckerberg thinks of Google+ (he calls it “their own little version of Facebook”).

However, the most interesting part of the interview comes when the trio starts discussing Zuckerberg’s relationship with Steve Jobs. “I had a lot of questions for him on how to build a team around you,” he says in response to one of Rose’s questions. “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.”

Zuckerberg professes respect for Apple because, like Facebook, it is out to build a company that will change the world rather than fatten the bottom line. Rose then asks Zuckerberg whether or not the two companies had ever talked about an acquisition.

“No. I don’t think it ever really got there,” he says. “I mean, nor would I have wanted to sell it.” Sandberg and Zuckerberg then start talking about how Jobs never raised the issue because he understood that Zuckerberg had no interest in selling. We here at Mashable have heard conflicting stories about whether Apple has ever tried to acquire Facebook, but we find it hard to believe the two companies never talked about the issue at some level, whether seriously or just in passing.

Sandberg ends the interview with a strong message for women. “If you survey men and women in college today in this country, the men are more ambitious than the women,” she says. “And until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men.”