Eh, their problem is that they keep making things that are technically cool, without really considering how socially awkward they might be.

I'm sure the news feed stuff was fun as hell to implement for them as coders, and it definitely gave Facebook a defining feature, but they didn't consider the social consequences of automated-stalking.

Reading this makes me wonder if Mark just adapted his apology from the news feed debacle to this instance. I should go find that and do a comparison.

Easy thing to do is just not have a Facebook account. Privacy issue solved!

But the news feed in retrospect has turned out to be a huge success. It seems to me that they just try to push the boundaries and find a balance that everyone is happy with.

At least they're good at saying "sorry, we fucked up". That's more than you can say for most companies.

I'd rate this about a 6/10 on the "sorry, we fucked up" scale. I agree that in a climate where Sony's response to the rootkit thing is normal, any humility goes a long way. This post is mostly sincere and mostly apologetic, but Zuckerberg needs a better editor. It could be streamlined a lot. He'd lost my attention by the second use of the word 'lightweight,' and I knew exactly what he meant.

I'd rather see the poorly-edited version. It gives me confidence that Zuck simply said what he meant, rather than run ten different versions through focus groups to see which one would get the best reaction.

I don't mean he should rely on a focus group or let someone else write for him, I mean finding one or two people that will help him make sure he's saying what he wants to say. There's a lot of room to improve clarity and readability without becoming 'sanitized.'

Sure. I'm not saying that sloppy writing is a necessary condition for candor. But it's a near-sufficient one.

Wait... I thought 22 year olds are perfectly capable of being CEOs?