Mark Zuckerberg, the 25 year old founder and CEO of Facebook conducted his interview for “60 Minutes” a few years ago when he was wearing flip-flops. Zuckerberg’s appearance was not viewed as disrespect to the popular television news magazine as the American public is infatuated with success stories of this caliber – a young person who has come up with an incredibly popular social network and is already worth 2 billion dollars at an age most people only graduate from college he was allowed to dress as the 23 year old that he was.
Zuckerberg has found himself in facing an online reputation problem last week when new Facebook privacy guidelines that are allowing more access to other people’s content (even if you are not their facebook friend) have enabled the public to look through his personal photos. In one of the pictures from Zuckerberg’s college days he is seen lounging in his pajamas wearing women’s shoes and clutching a teddy bear. This photo would not be more than an embarrassing image except for the fact that a medal object that looks like a pot-smoking pipe is sitting on the table right next to him, along with some beer bottles.
Obviously this problem goes beyond a negative online image, Facebook is making an effort to become more open and gain the type of growth Twitter currently is enjoying, the issue with that is that facebook is more personal. People are uploading stuff there they do not necessarily want to share with the world – case in point photo below. Facebook failed at protecting the privacy of their young CEO and in addition raised the issue of their privacy guidelines for public debate.
The other problem that surfaced along with this photo is that Facebook in an attempt to become a publicly traded company cannot afford that its CEO will be associated with drug use. Shareholders are looking for an impeccable record when entrusting their money with a company and a CEO who is very young as it is will have trouble convincing them that he is the right person to lead the company forward. In order to be taken seriously in the future Mark Zuckerberg will have show that he has matured. Images of him in a suite and tie at conferences will have to surface regularly if he has any chance of cleaning up his Google Resume.
We all need online reputation management as well need to be the focus of things.
Posted by: gulf news | August 01, 2010 at 11:23 AM