Yesterday, BoomTown paid a visit to the Washington, D.C., office of Facebook to meet its reps in the nation’s capital.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the social networking site has a very small staff–for now, just a trio of on-the-young-side dudes–battening down the hatches from a funky office in a funky section of D.C., Dupont Circle, far from the tonier and lobbyist-rich K Street corridor.
A new survey that should surprise only the people behind the Beacon debacle shows that a majority of Americans of all ages don’t like being tracked online by advertisers.
In related stating-the-obvious news, Americans also find Jon and Kate Gosselin super-annoying.
How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?
Muchety-much! But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of the work of “fact”-ion–titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”–which is set to come out July 14, along with a movie later.
Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck, but here’s my own list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair facts that should be in the book.
BoomTown tried to get Chris Kelly to give up more during an onstage interview I did with the Facebook chief privacy officer last night at the third “Tech Policy Summit” and was only moderately successful in the endeavor.
Oh he is a smoothie all right, as a lawyer and now as a wannabe politician.
Kelly–who is still working at the social-networking site, where his job is to make sure consumer data, privacy, the children and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation are all safe and sound–is also running for the job of California’s attorney general.
BoomTown is impatiently cooling heels waiting for a press conference to begin about “new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service.”
The Yahoo reorg finally announced this morning is positively thrilling in comparison! It’s like being at the Constitutional Convention, except for geeks.
But we’re liveblogging it anyway!
Under cover of darkness last night, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the social-networking site’s blog that it would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
Oh, this is just too good to resist. Therefore, BoomTown shall not tarry in our ongoing job of busting the chops of the young Facebook leader, whose minions have actually–and I am not joking here–given him the nickname: The Wizard.
Well, the Wizard obviously had to pull back the curtain last night and show some serious mea culpa to the people, before they got out the pitchforks.
Here’s a translation of Zuckerberg’s message.
When Sun Microsystems Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement about online privacy online in 1999, there was a horrified hubbub at the time that he had the audacity to say such a thing.
You know, that he actually uttered such a terrible thing as the truth.
What a shock then that everyone is now in yet another tizzy about Facebook changes to its Terms of Service, which pretty much state the obvious again by noting that Facebook archives info you posted, even if you quit the service.
As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.
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 talks even more about sharing information, explains why he wants to stay CEO, discusses mistakes like Beacon and successes like Facebook’s open platform, and defends widgets. Meanwhile, Sandberg talks about why she came to Facebook from Google, compares widget popularity to Elvis fans and talks about where ad spending is going online (think virtual ice cream cones).
For those who missed it, here is the entire video of the piece CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired on Facebook last night, helmed by veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl.
It is not exactly the big wet kiss I was expecting the hot social-networking company would get, but it was also definitely not an ouch-that-hurts piece that could have [...]
CBS’s “60 Minutes” will air its Facebook piece on Sunday, and BoomTown is curious to see what take the iconic new magazine show will have on the hot and hyped social network and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
In clips it has released, Zuckerberg tells veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl that its stalkerish ad product Beacon–a half-baked ad [...]
It is easy to make light of the constant swirl of twittery online activity that surrounds well-known blogger Robert Scoble.
But Facebook’s disabling of his account yesterday–because he was apparently using a script to access and pull data from his own profile there to move it to other social graphs of his choice–is not going to [...]
Just because it is the holiday season and BoomTown is feeling all holly and jolly and merry, it doesn’t mean we’re going to back down on the fiasco that was, is and will always be Facebook’s Beacon.
In fact, we’re hopping mad all over again after a talk we had last week with a very smart [...]
Yesterday, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a major mea culpa blog post about the controversy around its Beacon ad product, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your profile’s news feed.
As usual, BoomTown asked for the obligatory on-the-record interview with Zuckerberg, but he still has not invited us over to get social at his social networking HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. So while we’re waiting by the phone, we need to get busy.
Thus, we continue our thankless quest to decode all memos from Internet moguls (BoomTown speaks fluent Web 2.0 double talk).
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 [...]
As inevitable as air, Silicon Valley likes to build them up and then tear them down.
Thus, the bell now tolls for Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg.
We at BoomTown have been consistent and persistent in voicing our various worries about the young entrepreneur, from one of our very first posts, questioning (we think fairly) the [...]
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. Read more »
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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