Is This Really News?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on January 11th, 2008 11:21 AM

The top story on Techmeme today is about Mark Zuckerberg appearing on 60 minutes. Maybe it’s that we all feel a little bit of ownership in the company’s success but a news story about another news story is kind of nuts. I had the opportunity to check out the show’s trailer and it’s pretty entertaining. The interviewer immediately dismisses Zuckerberg for using canned responses that only a CEO would use.

Mike Arrington takes Zuckerberg’s appearance as a personal attack on the blogosphere for failing to address the ongoing violation of privacy rights by Facebook. Honestly, Arrington has a point. SocialAds directly integrate your friends’ faces into their advertisements without permission from your friends. The counter-argument is that users inherently agree to these advertisements when they registered with the site. I’m not quite sure that I agree with that position.

Whatever the case is, there is a whole lot of discussion over an interview that hasn’t taken place. Perhaps all of the buzz stems from Zuckerberg’s lack of public appearances. Rather than being an avid spokesperson for Facebook, Zuckerberg frequently flies under the radar and only comes out to speak when the company comes under heavy fire (as was the case with Beacon). So will Beacon turn out to be the revolutionary product that we once imagined? Not anytime soon! Do you think Beacon will succeed in the end?

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