Facebook CEO Apologizes

Mark Zuckerberg wants his supporters and users of the Facebook platform to know that he is very sorry for the mistakes they’ve made in implementing their Beacon technology.

About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

This is a good move from a personal standpoint, it probably helps relieve some of the personal anxiety that comes with being responsible for so much outrage out there. It’s also a great move for the company, because if anything, this privacy issue has created some real resentment between long time users of Facebook’s platform.

While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

All of the negative press won’t be enough to overwhelm Facebook in the long term, but I’d be surprised if it’s potential for growth slows due to the bad press. Hopefully this is a lesson for all hot companies that look to act as data-mining operations and conduits for corporate preying and exploitation of social web users.

Mashable put up a poll to gauge the public reaction to Facebook’s drama.

Fred Soto is an Attorney and Entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley.
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