The Beacon disaster was all the proof we needed. Mark Zuckerberg (23), CEO of Facebook, is too inexperienced to run Facebook and he should step down. His team knows the difference between opt-in and opt-out. The decision to leave it up to users to opt-out shows either tremendous arrogance or a disturbing lack of understanding of the most significant privacy issue of our time. It's about users - stupid. They don't like to have their information shared or published without their explicit permission.
Yesterday, a friend told me "Yeah, he's young, but he's so smart...
Look at what he's done." Really? Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of
Facebook. I use it every day. But there is nothing new or revolutionary
about Facebook. Social networking sites has been around for 6+ years.
The truth is Friendster and MySpace paved the way for rapid adoption of
online social networking to really take off.
Now, building out with college kids was a good idea and Mark's timing was right. The F8 "open" development platform was the right thing to do. However, the poor execution of Beacon is alarming. The fallout could be significant and the investors/Board should make some moves now - before it's too late.
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