Facebook: The 60 Minutes interview


In case you missed it, here is the 60 Minutes segment about Facebook. It is a nice primer for those of you who don't know the history of Facebook or haven't seen how awkward Toddler CEO and 23-year-old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg can be on camera.

It includes comments from Kara Swisher and Charlene Li, both of whom have written pretty good reviews of the show.

Host Lesley Stahl makes much too big a deal about his age. How old was Gates? How old was Paul Allen? This is a non-issue. It probably helps, as he probably has less fear than all those old farts over 40. ;-)

The most surprising criticism, however, comes from Kara Swisher who can't seem to understand how Zuckerberg could make a mistake while launching Beacon and then did not immediately back away from it as soon as the bloggers and FB users started to complain.

The company had the same reaction by those groups when it launched what many (including myself) consider to be one of most valuable Facebook features: the news feed. As I wrote last July, "To me, the news feed is the most important (and valuable) part of Facebook. It is unique. As unique as Google's PageRank. As unique as Amazon's recommendation engine."

When the news feed launched, everyone was up in arms: change of terms and conditions, change of service, privacy issues, personal data sharing, and so on ... many of the same concerns people have with Beacon. If I were FB, I would have waited a bit to see if the dust settled, too.

Either way, it is worth a look: a nice video snack.


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