All Things Digital

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s Part 4 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. (I posted one video part of the discussion with Zuckerberg and Sandberg every day this week, starting Monday and concluding today.)

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg and Sandberg take questions from the audience about privacy, older users, needed Facebook applications, how open its platform should be, data protection, the dilemma of too many Facebook friends and the importance of search.

Last week, I appeared at the second annual Tech Policy Summit, held in Hollywood, which covered a wide range of important topics related to digital issues and public policy.

The privacy panel I moderated was called “Personalization and Privacy: Deciding Who Does What with Customer Data.”

And the decision right now on that critical issue? Pretty much anyone does what they want with consumer data!

I did video interviews with two of the three panelists on the privacy panel: Jules Polonetsky, AOL SVP and chief privacy officer and Joanne McNabb, who is the chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection (the third panelist was Leslie Harris, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology).

In these, Polonetsky discusses challenges big companies like AOL (TWX) can do for consumers and McNabb talks about what government can do.

(Actually, not nearly enough!)

Here’s the video (and here is another video I did, related to the content panel I also moderated):

[UPDATED with more information.]

So exactly why did Facebook unleash such a massive legal fury on 02138 magazine yesterday over documents the publication posted online?

Because, said sources, those documents–including an application to Harvard University–contained Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Security number, the full name of his girlfriend and the address of his parent’s house in New York.

Now, apparently, the Beacon’s on the other foot.

The independent magazine, which is aimed at Harvard alumni, put up a series of court documents in a downloadable format here it obtained from a court in Massachusetts related to a hard-hitting story it recently published about the origins of Facebook at Harvard, and had inadvertently not redacted that sensitive personal information in all places at first.

It has since removed those references, but many online readers had already downloaded the PDF files.

“It was a regrettable error and we have fixed it,” said Richard Bradley, executive editor of the magazine.

Wrote the magazine’s spokesperson in a statement to BoomTown: “1) It was an oversight and as soon as 02138 was alerted they took it down. 2) The parents’ address is listed in the white pages and they are the only Zuckerbergs in Dobbs Ferry. 02138 nonetheless took it down as a courtesy. 3) This was not brought to 02138’s attention by Facebook.”

Harsh!

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Here’s a video interview I did while at the Monaco Media Forum with Facebook’s Chief Revenue Officer Owen Van Natta about the new ad product from the hot social network–dubbed “social advertising”– that has everyone’s knickers in a knot.

Excuse that metaphor, but I am traveling in England, so it seemed exactly the right one to describe the horror that many have expressed that ever more targeted advertising is going on on the Internet.

Imagine that!

In any case, listen to Van Natta–the longtime and often unsung Facebook exec who struck the sweet deal with Microsoft and is the one most charged with making it so with that pretty explicit chief revenue officer title of his.

Of course, the controversy that has mounted in the United States after Facebook unveiled its efforts last week to use its vaunted “social graph” to tout new ad initiatives that would target users’ behavior and leverage their friends comes as no surprise.

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