Facebook CEO Admits They Made Mistakes

Zuckerberg’s first comment since the privacy controversy, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that they, the company, “made a bunch of mistakes” and want to “get this stuff right”.

Recently Zuckerberg has been criticized for a lack of communication on Facebook users’ privacy concerns, and a public comment from Zuckerberg hasn’t been forthcoming. Zuckerberg’s speech isn’t a public apology, but rather, a reply to a private email from tech enthusiast Robert Scoble, who then requested permission to reprint his response.

Zuckerberg’s replied that Facebook wants to respond to the dustup with a product fix. Rather than simply telling users what he intends to change, he’d rather go ahead and make that change.

Here’s Zuckerberg’s reply in full:

Hey,

We’ve been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve. I’d like to show an improved product rather than just talk about things we might do.

We’re going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we’ve built this week. I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time.

I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.

I hope we’ll get a chance to catch up in person sometime this week. Let me know if you have any thoughts for me before then.

Mark

To Facebook’s users and followers, it has seems that Facebook either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to get involved with user concerns around privacy. It’s great that Facebook is looking to improve its privacy settings, but explaining these moves earlier and more openly may have been better.