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 (YHOO) reorg finally announced this morning is positively thrilling in comparison!

But we’re liveblogging it anyway!

Here’s what I got in the morning mail:

Hi Kara–

For more and future updates we encourage you to join the Facebook Group called the Official Group for Media & Analysts Following Facebook.

Also this:

Subject: Facebook Opens Governance of Service and Policy Process to Users

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

11:11 am:

Facebook PR honcho Elliot Schrage opens up the conference, but I am honestly only hear: “Blah, blah, blah.”

Then, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg comes on.

“Openness and transparency is not just an end state,” he said. “It’s also a process.”

Say what, Willis?

Soon Zuckerberg is explaining how he wants to craft Facebook’s rules of the road going forward. It’s like being at the Constitutional Convention, except for geeks.

Alert! Comment! Notify! Transparency! Oversharing!

11:17 am:

“We want to be as clear as possible that we do not own user data,” said Zuckerberg. “We feel really bad about that.”

Us too!

11:21 am:

I get to ask the first question, which is about how this whole mess happened.

Zuckerberg said Facebook had made previous changes all the time to its Terms of Service to complex legal documents. This time, in trying to make them simpler, “we made a few mistakes,” which in turn set off a firestorm.

Ah, the mistakes-were-made defense!

“A lot of the feedback was fair,” acknowledged Zuckerberg, who then talked about the new notification and feedback and comments options, so it will not happen ever again. Except next month.

Also, there will be a vote. Well, only on some issues that get people all hot and bothered, presumably. But who decides what gets voted on and who wins the vote?

Unclear. But vote early and often.

But, said Schrage: “We underestimated the sense of ownership” that Facebook users have for the service.

11:25 am:

A question about whether or not Facebook should have known better after its Beacon advertising debacle.

Not the same thing, said Zuckerberg. But point taken!

11:27 am:

More legal stuff. Zzzzzz.

Then a question on phishing scams. Off topic! Schrage cuts it off tout de suite. Sorry, fella, but this is about one screw-up at a time.

Another shouldn’t-you-have-known-better related question, referring back to the News Feed debacle of 2007. That was before the Beacon debacle of 2008. Which was before the ToS debacle of 2009. (Is anyone noticing a pattern here?)

In other words, Facebook should have known better.

Radical transparency, said Zuckerberg: “This is all about us trusting our users.”

He might start that ball rolling by not sneaking up on us all the time.

11:33 am:

More about rules of the road. More about the transparent community.

Zuckerberg is now fully channelling Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Call ends.

Boo!

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.

That’s due to the controversy Facebook has been embroiled in this week about changes it recently made to its Terms of Service that gave the company unusually sweeping rights over customers’ content and privacy.

While Zuckerberg had said in his first post about the issue that Facebook was not in the content-stealing business, the strong language in the ToS sent the usual suspects into a major meltdown over the possibility that the young geek had gone into full-scale evil mogul mode.

As if!

In fact, Zuckerberg has been ensconced in his Silicon Valley lair for years now, counting down until he knows precisely everything about everyone’s drunken college days!

Until D-Day then, here is my translation of his latest backtracking post:

What the Wizard wrote: Update on Terms

Today at 10:17 pm

Translation: OK, I have reached my limit of being yelled at by Sheryl and Elliot, have had my usual breakfast of Red Bull and Frosted Flakes–they’re grrreat!–and am ready to eat some major digital crow this morning.

I mean, night, which is my morning, because I actually slept through all this noise today about this whole Terms of Service “controversy.”

What the Wizard wrote: A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Translation: Did you know crow is delicious if you eat it with a little Bosco on top?

More to the point, I would just like to assure you that we have taken our lawyers–who idiotically rewrote our ToS to give us ownership rights to the Bible, “American Idol” and everything Bill O’Reilly utters–and sent them over to our friends at MySpace, because their owner, News Corp. (NWS), already owns two of those three [and also this site!].

What the Wizard wrote: Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.

Translation: As in: More yelling by Sheryl and Elliott and more Fedexing of lawyers to MySpace HQ in Beverly Hills.

But after we calmed down, we all decided the best course of action was to shoot ourselves in the right foot to stop the bleeding from when we shot our left foot before.

We are, of course, completely out of feet now, so if these hijinks continue, sooner or later, someone is going to lose an eye. By someone, I mean, um, me.

What the Wizard wrote: Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.

Translation: Facebook, of course, never had any intention of stealing content and copyright! Perish the thought! After all, that’s the job of Google (GOOG)!

By contrast, ours is to collect incredibly embarrassing photos of everyone in the United States until one of them runs for president, and then our nefarious scheme to control the world begins.

We were planning on blackmailing the world for one billllliiiion dollars then, but Microsoft kind of forked over 15 times that without any pressure.

Still, we would like to own Palo Alto, Calif., and get free parking 24/7, so there will be demands!

Until then, enjoy the sheep-throwing. Mwaahahahahahahaha! (Quick visual: I am petting my white cat right now with Ernst Stavro Blofeld-like evil glee, and am, of course, cackling.)

What the Wizard wrote: More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.

Translation: Not to be completely and utterly arrogant or anything, but we just passed Pakistan, and those Brazilians better get ready to samba.

By the way, once we get to No. 1–look out, China!–we plan on decreeing that everyone in the world speak Pig Latin and that forthwith it will be flip-flop Fridays.

Also: Esyay, Iway amway anway alienway omfray anotherway anetplay.

What the Wizard wrote: Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.

Translation: Ybay ethay ayway, “Otay Ervesay Anmay”? It’sway away ookbookcay.

In other words, I am sure you will make delicious contributions, after which Facebook will “invite” you to our world-wide HQ to share in a lovely meal.

Especially those Winklevii. I look forward to the twins coming by soon!

What the Wizard wrote: You have my commitment that we’ll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we’ve changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.

Translation: To my credit, I did give in much quicker than with the Beacon ad snafu. And you thought I learned nothing during that debacle!

And, by outside experts, I mean Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, who yells much, much louder than Sheryl or Elliot combined.

What the Wizard wrote: If you’d like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we’ve created–Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I’m looking forward to reading your input.

Translation: Here’s my first pass, based on the U.S. Bill of Rights, Amendment I:

Facebook shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition Faebook for a redress of grievances.*

*Exceptway, ithway ymay ompletecay iscretionday, enwhay Iway
ecideday otherwiseway.

When Sun Microsystems (JAVA) Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement about online privacy 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 probably can’t delete it.

No, you can’t–because you shared it, whether it be a photo, an email, a Wall post, whatever, already.

Because the fact of the matter is–since the moment the first caveman sent the first email to another Neanderthal–there has never been true online privacy for anyone who has chosen to participate in this highly interactive medium.

Here’s the key definition of interactive: “mutually or reciprocally active.”

That means once you send something to others, it is out there in cyberspace forever, never ever to return.

And that goes double on social-networking sites, where–let’s be honest–people egregiously overshare and then get all righteous when it is explained to them that sharing means, um, sharing.

As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.

Now, BoomTown has learned to live with some very unfortunate haircut choices preserved forever online and does not often agree with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (I and everyone else slapped him silly on the Beacon debacle until he gave in, for example).

But he is technically right on this, even if Facebook could have done a much better job communicating the changes it made to its ToS, especially since ToS controversies are the Bermuda Triangle of the online arena.

This lack of clarity has always a major Facebook weakness, but it was the same for AOL–now owned by Time Warner (TWX)–back in the day when it was raising privacy red flags all the time.

But that does not make Facebook wrong, as Zuckerberg finally said clearly in a post on Facebook:

People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.”

Zuckerberg then notes that users are just going to have to trust services like Facebook with their data, which is up to the individual to decide before posting whatever online.

And, if regrets come later? Well, try this quote from the great playwright Arthur Miller: “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”

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

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. (I will post one video part of the discussion with Zuckerberg and Sandberg every day this week, starting yesterday and concluding Thursday.)

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 advertising spending is going online (think virtual ice cream cones).

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 been done.

For those who don’t know the tale, it hits all the high (and low) points of the Facebook saga, with a button-pushing efficiency that television does so well. Thus, a synopsis:

Web Wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg, who seems genetically unable to smile (unlike, say, his deeply charming sister). Harvard. Ratty hoodies and flip-flops. Mark makes a Facebook profile for Lesley (how much do we love that she blocked her boss Les Moonves?).

Next stop: Silicon Valley! Dropping out and venture funding. Toddler CEO (that one was coined by BoomTown). Crazy HQ with kooky-looking employees, one of whom you know was forced to ride a unicycle through the office by Lesley.

Big growth. Is Mark Google’s Larry and Sergey rolled into one? Inexplicably, ZERO mention of its bigger rival, MySpace, even once. Worth $15 billion?–an insane number Lesley does not question nearly enough.

Oops, Privacy! Oops, Beacon! BoomTown tsks tsks that stalkerish advertising idiocy and is asked about Mark’s qualifications as CEO (although no one cares what BoomTown thinks). Mark retorts: Hey, we need to make money. Lesley, so give the Wunderkind a break!

But here is the entire segment for your viewing enjoyment:

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 scheme Facebook cooked up that sends information about your purchases on partner Web sites back to your profile on the service–needs work.

Really? I had no idea! Oh, wait, I did.

Zuckerberg goes on to assure Stahl and the viewing public that Beacon will be a good tool someday. “It might take some work for us to get this exactly right,” said Zuckerberg in the interview. “This is something we think is going to be a really good thing.”

Since the 23-year-old is no Martha Stewart, we would like to take his word for it, but will not for now.

Zuckerberg also tells Stahl not to expect an IPO in 2008–well, I was not expecting one, but thanks for the confirmation–meaning that Facebook would have to make do with the $300 million it recently got from Microsoft and Chinese rich man Li Ka-shing for small stakes in the company.

The investments, as faithful BoomTown readers know, gave Facebook an insane $15 billion valuation. Despite the start-up’s fast growth and impressive record of building a pretty good service, I hope Stahl gives that wacky number her patented dubious eyebrow raise she always throws at various and sundry midrange dictators talking democracy.

We’re also interested in seeing the piece for you’re-so-vain reasons, because I was also interviewed by Stahl for the segment.

No surprise, Stahl asked if I was biased because of my partner, the Google exec (see my voluminous disclosure about that and more here), and because Rupert Murdoch now owned both Facebook rival MySpace and Dow Jones (owner of this site).

Well, no to both, since I was slapping around Facebook long before Google declared Open Social war on it and also before News Corp. was our corporate pooh-bah (also, the idea of me doing Rupe’s social-networking dirty work is laughable).

But most of the interview was about the many challenging issues I and others have raised about Facebook. In her lean-forward style, Stahl asked me a range of questions, mostly having to do with my many pieces on the start-up and Zuckerberg.

An old pro at the shake-up game, she noted at the start that some had called me “nasty” and “mean” for my sharpish reporting on Facebook.

I confess! I confess! It’s all true!

That is, if by mean, Stahl meant my thinking the valuation was undeserved thus far, raising questions about the need for a magic business plan to support that valuation and, of course, my wondering if Zuckerberg was experienced enough to be Facebook’s CEO.

Then, of course you can call me Cruella De Poke.

How I wish CBS–paging Quincy Smith!–would allow embedding of its videos, but here is a link to one clip from the interview where Zuckerberg talks about Beacon. And here is another about Zuckerberg’s wacky days as a hacker at Harvard.

The show airs at 7 p.m.

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 turn out well for the social-networking company.

In fact, it seems to me that the company is about to shoot itself in the foot once again. And–let’s be honest–Facebook certainly doesn’t have any bullet-free feet to aim at after its recent debacles with its stalkerish Beacon ad product and its ill-advised legal action against a magazine that published embarrassing information about Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

As goofy as it seems, it looks like Scoble has aimed perfectly at the Achilles’ heel of Facebook–the testy issue of data portability and how much control you should have over your own information online.

In this case, as Scoble wrote in a blog post today, the fight with Facebook is over an effort he has been making with DataPortability.org, which notes on its Web site that “our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between, our chosen tools or vendors.”

Such activity–which Facebook characterizes as “scraping”–is not allowed under its Terms of Use.

More to the point, such an ability would be damaging to Facebook’s business plan around building a robust ad business. The success of that squarely relies on people staying and actively using the service because they have committed time and effort in putting up scads of information, photos and videos about themselves on the service, as well as establishing a complex and personally valuable network of friends.

For example, Scoble has said he has about 5,000 friends on Facebook alone–the upper limit on the service.

That’s some digital Rolodex you don’t want to lose, and Facebook knows this.

Thus, it has zero interest in allowing people to escape easily if they want to, even though THE INFORMATION ON FACEBOOK IS THEIRS AND NOT FACEBOOK’S.

Sorry for the caps, but I wanted to be as clear as I could: All that information on Facebook is Robert Scoble’s. So, he should–even if he agreed to give away his rights to move it to use the service in the first place (he had no other choice if he wanted to join)–be allowed to move it wherever he wants.

Still, in an email to him, Facebook customer service wrote: “Our systems indicate that you’ve been highly active on Facebook lately and viewing pages at a quick enough rate that we suspect you may be running an automated script. This kind of activity would be a violation of our Terms of Use and potentially of federal and state laws.

“As a result, your account has been disabled. Please reply to this email with a description of your recent activity on Facebook. In addition, please confirm with us that in the future you will not scrape or otherwise attempt to obtain in any manner information from our Web site except as permitted by our Terms of Use, and that you will immediately delete and not use in any manner any such information you may have previously obtained.”

Scary! Of course, because it is Facebook, there is already a group formed to urge he be reinstated.

In other words, Facebook is about to get Scobleized and it is not going to be pretty.

In fact, we’re hopping mad all over again after a talk we had last week with a very smart exec at a company that Facebook does a lot of business with, who posited the right way the social-networking phenomenon could have rolled out the now radioactive ad system.

It did not have to be that way, as the exec I was talking to noted, if Facebook had first launched the Beacon service–which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed–as a noncommercial tool for users, focusing on things they had posted on a range of external Web sites that they actually might like being broadcast back to friends at Facebook.

Specifically, that could mean popular sharing sites like Flickr, YouTube, Yelp, Craigslist and Twitter, or any place where people like to and–more importantly–intend to share. Finding an easy way to let friends know what you are posting on the Web, as anyone knows, is still not very easy at all to do.

Thus, Facebook would have provided a valuable service if it had just tweaked Beacon to be actually helpful, rather than actually stalkerish.

So why did Facebook focus the service on ads first?

Well, to my mind, there were 15 billion reasons.

In other words, Facebook had to and has to desperately find some sort of magic advertising pill to sell to somehow backfill its spectacularly impossible $15 billion valuation, a financing whose pressure to perform is clearly at the rotten core of the Beacon program.

So a successful Beacon meant a successful Facebook, even if it was not such a successful idea to help consumers.

During a discussion of the mess, the exec noted correctly that the real problem lay in the fact that there has never been a true value proposition offered to Facebook users for tolerating Beacon.

In fact, the value accrued only to Facebook and to the advertiser or retailer, who might get new sales. Advertisers’ reasons for Beaconing are obvious–there is a benefit to this kind of deep relationship-targeting, or there surely will be over time.

After much noise over Beacon, Facebook did back down, trying to assuage those critics by giving users more control over the data with a global opt-out option for users.

That still has raised a lot of questions about security and privacy of data that still could be transmitted.

And it also did not put the onus on Facebook to remove its opt-out system and try to design something users would want to opt-in to.

Opting in, of course, is at the heart of Facebook’s third-party universe of widgets, which users can pick and choose from without being forced to.

It would be nice then, if Facebook would extend those same rights to its audience that it does when it is happily serving up SuperPokes and Vampire Bites.

As usual, BoomTown asked for the obligatory on-the-record interview with Zuckerberg (pictured above), 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).

(In October, we did this for Randy Falco’s memo about the AOL layoffs. And, back in late August, we also translated a memo from Yahoo President Sue Decker about its reorganization of management.)

So here’s my take on Mark’s take:

Mark wrote: Thoughts on Beacon

Translation: Facebook PR head Brandee Barker’s thoughts on Beacon, so Valleywag’s Owen Thomas will stop pestering her.

Mark wrote: About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the Web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

Translation: I thought I was the CEO…b#*t#*, as my business card used to read, but it turns out maybe not so much. I would surely like to zombie-bite those annoying reporters, the whiny privacy advocates and those cut-and-run advertisers, who obviously don’t understand my $15 billion worth of genius. I wonder if I could find a way to blame the Winklevosses, who have the audacity to sue me for stealing their original social networking idea at Harvard!

Mark wrote: When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the Web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

Translation: When we first thought of Beacon, we thought it would make bank to backfill that kooky valuation, so Steve Ballmer would stop texting me “Where’s the beef, dude?” hourly. By lightweight, we meant we were actually thinking of a sneaky way of tricking users into becoming digital billboards without realizing it. By easy and controlled, we meant an easy way to control their brains into thinking this was a good thing.

Mark wrote: But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends. It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.

Translation: But we lost our balance sitting on the big pile of money we got from Microsoft and that richer-than-rich Asian billionaire. To repeat: Lightweight=sneaky. Since most of our users are too busy popping each others zits or sending digital teddy bears or being cartoonified, we were shocked that they were actually paying attention to our efforts to milk their interests in, say, mountain biking or spelunking, as if they were cows and we were Old MacDonald. E-I-E-I-Oops.

Mark wrote: Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

Translation: Facebook has succeeded so far, in part because people are simultaneously natural stalkers and shameless exhibitionists. So we thought they’d jump at the chance to tell all their friends they had bought, say, a year’s supply of Viagra or downloaded songs from Air Supply or ordered several pairs of Spanx.

Mark wrote: This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

Translation: Philosophy? All those Harvard philosophy majors now work for me in customer service. Opt-in, opt-out. If we say it fast over and over again, users will hopefully get really dazed and confused and just lay down and accept their ultimate fate as target practice for marketers. More to the point, I just said we will still receive information on all your purchases and I hope you did not notice that. Opt-in-opt-out-opt-in-opt-out-opt-in-opt-out. Are you getting sleepy yet?

Mark wrote: On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you.

Translation: And we have made it extra special confusing to change your Beacon settings, because of all the whining from you teeny brains, which is really annoying to us big brains here at Facebook. To get back at you, we’re hard at work thinking up all sorts of new privacy violations you’ll never be able to understand!

Mark wrote: Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Translation: You may return to your regularly scheduled SuperPoking.

Mark wrote: Mark

Translation: Beacon fiasco aside, I’m still the CEO b#*#*, no matter how many times Swisher mocks my flip-flops.

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?

Indeed, there was no benefit in staying stubborn about the feature that might not even be the be-all-and-end-all ad solution the social-networking site needs.

Reaction, of course, is mixed, as to the extent of the apology, the change and its impact.

On one hand, Om Malik of GigaOm, who is calling it Beacon Gate, noted: “I think this is a good move by Zuckerberg and I hope his team learns from it. This is the second time they have tried to test the limits of their community and gotten some flack for it. It would be better if they asked–they are a social community–and being social means listening and talking with each other first, not after the fact.”

On the other, Dave McClure of Master of 500 Hats defends Facebook: “The fact of the matter: Most of this sh– just doesn’t matter to most FB users. It might be a PR screw-up, but as long as the user base doesn’t have a negative reaction, eventually the advertisers won’t give a damn.”

We’ll see about that, of course, because this kind of thing can turn into death by a thousand cuts for a company, if they are not careful and don’t put the right kind of leadership in place with enough judgment to avoid this kind of mess.

More on that–the most critical issue going forward for Facebook–in this space soon.

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 unproven business underpinnings of the hot social network, the juvenile nature of its much vaunted third-party widgets, the insanity of its $15 billion valuation, its inane legal fights and the problems with its worrisome ad efforts.

We’ve also taken (we think probably unfairly) shots at those flip-flops he wears. And we did call him a toddler CEO, also a low blow, we have to admit.

But now, it seems, a mob is forming, sparked by the issues around Facebook’s controversial Beacon ad program, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed.

While it made some changes in Beacon last week, Facebook has not given users a global opt-out of the controversial marketing system in which the social network is seeking to link behavior and advertising more tightly for supposedly bigger payoffs.

The mainstream media and blogosphere, which recently were feting him, have now turned and ire has been growing over Beacon, which seems to be focusing everyone on the inexperience of Zuckerberg and the challenges facing Facebook.

That was clear in a very cogent piece by Josh Quittner on his Techland blog for Fortune today, which was titled “RIP Facebook?”

He writes:

A lot of people say that Facebook has jumped the shark. That’s flat out wrong. In fact, Facebook is now being devoured by the shark. There’s so much blood in the water, it’s attracting other sharks. And if Facebook’s not careful, one of them is bound to come along and finish it off. I’ve never seen anything like it in the annals of fast-rising tech companies that fail.”

As Zuckerberg might say: That bites.

And here is a photo that was put on the Fake Steve Jobs blog, which was using the PhotoCrank service, where users can add captions:

Oh my.

As Quittner writes correctly, right now it is the press that has turned on Zuckerberg, which is sure to be followed by much more important advertisers, who shy away from controversy.

We’ll see how it plays out, but it is surely a flash point moment for Facebook.

Or in the immortal words of actress Joan Crawford: “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

Feel the love, Mark.