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Zigging and Zagging on Zander   A Spin Too Far: Bill Lerach Channels...
Dec 6 2007 5:21PM EST

Facebook: What's Your Problem? PR or Business?

While most 23-year-olds are still trying to get a job they don't really, really hate, Mark Zuckerberg is finding out how it feels to be in the CEO media barrel.

While not one of Zuckerberg's "friends," Jack Flack still felt a need to help the young billionaire with his problem by offering him a Rescue Memo.

What's the problem?

Well, some say it's largely a "PR problem." Fortune's Josh Quittner even makes the case that the bad communications could bring Facebook crashing down, while his colleague David Kirkpatrick dedicated an entire column to asserting that Zuckerberg was simply getting the tall poppy treatment from the media.

Apparently, Zuckerberg agreed with Quittner. Parse his mea culpa, and it's obvious that Zuckerberg is basically apologizing for how Facebook handled Beacon, and not for Beacon itself.

And that brings us to the real problem. By rolling out Beacon, Facebook changed the fundamental agreement it had with its users about their privacy. Some members don't care much about the privacy of their data, but many do. And for those who do care, discovering the implications of the new "service" was like finding out that your new spouse has given up the stationary bike and taken up cocaine instead. It wasn't quite what you had signed up for.

Now, without a doubt, the ham-handedness of how Facebook rolled out Beacon as an opt-out application, and then the ostrich-like response to MoveOn.org's blistering campaign, clearly exacerbated Facebook's troubles. But without the deeper business problem, there wouldn't have been a PR problem.

So what's been the result of the mea culpa? Zuckerman seams to have effectively taken the air out of the ball with the MSM, which have largely reported the apology/modifications as the end of the snafu. It seems a forthright tone and a couple of application tweaks can create a very tidy story. Meanwhile, the commentary on tech sites indicates that the geeks are still far from satisfied.

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