Here’s an interview I did with Master of 500 Hats blogger Dave McClure last week, which I am sure to regret at some point.
Mostly because of this odd illustration he also did (that I secretly like way too much).
In it, he asks me what I would do with various big Internet companies if I were the supreme leader.
Not much! Thus, my flourishing career as a backseat driver!
Here’s the video:
So, Mark Zuckerberg apologized.
Yes, he took too long to do it. Yes, he was dumb to release a product, Beacon, without thinking through the potential privacy implications. Yes, it was a big black eye for the Facebook founder.
But good for him.
While some are arguing that no one but the press and privacy advocates cared about the whole controversy around the ad system that can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed, it was only bound to get uglier out there.
So Zuckerberg, as he had before on news feeds, correctly calculated that it was time to eat crow. “I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better,” he wrote in a blog post today on the topic.
We knew that was coming, didn’t we?
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
