Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended changes to the service which have led to privacy concerns, and said that he has no date in mind for a public floatation of the company.
Zuckerberg used an address to the All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California on Wednesday to reiterate his defiant stance on Facebook’s intention to push the boundaries of its offering to users.
“Certainly on a day-to-day basis if we didn’t disrupt things that would be the easiest way to proceed,” Zuckerberg told the conference.
“But we don’t believe that if we did that we’d be doing the best thing for us long-term or for the industry.”
Just a week before the Wall Street Journal-organised get-together of some of the world’s biggest names in online enterprise, Facebook had simplified its privacy controls, so that users could more easily keep information private.
The steps for doing so are now contained on a single page on the site.
At the same time, the site also made it easier for users to conceal their details from third parties, in an effort to counter some critics who had said the privacy settings were too cumbersome.
But Zuckerberg was unrepentant about his company’s right to pursue a radical and innovative approach to its offering, Reuters reported. It would continue to make what it believed were the right changes, even if some of them were controversial, he said.
The company does have a fine line to tread between encouraging its users to share information socially with others, and their individual privacy, yet it is increasingly being seen as infringing onto territory occupied by the likes of Google and Yahoo as a general resource for information of all kinds.
Zuckerberg revealed to the All Things Digital audience that more than 200,000 websites now use the company’s social ‘plug-ins’, which allows Facebook users to click on buttons across the Web to show that they “liked” a particular online article or video.
Facebook is backed by a range of technology companies and investors including Digital Sky Technologies, Microsoft Corp, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing, as well as venture capital firms Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners.
But it is under constant scrutiny from investors who hope one day to be able to buy shares in the fast-growing company.
Zuckerberg confirmed recent media reports that the company now had four times as many advertisers than a year ago. He also said that the company’s social ‘plug-ins’, which allow Facebook users to click on buttons across the web to show that they “liked” a particular online article or video, were now being used by more than 200,000 websites.
“I don’t know if we always get it right,” Zuckerberg said about some of the service’s controversial new features. “But my prediction will be that a few years from now, we’ll look back and wonder why there was ever this time when all these websites and applications … weren’t personalised in some way.”
UK internet users have visited more social networking sites than search engines in one month than ever before.
