I think it's a shame Mark has taken this stance, because it denies the genius he rightly can lay claim to, which is to tap into the natural and healthy human desire to make new friends and help them learn about each other. The reality is that now at scale, the rules of engagement are changing and corporate interests and power plays are driving the business not Mark's altruistic visions. (Unless he too is now focused on power instead of his product.) Facebook needs to monetise properly pre 2012 IPO (probably in the roadmap) and it is blatantly obvious they are relying on a targeted ad model and tailoring every facet of the business to an aggressive land grab of that territory. I personally think that is a classic case of biting the hand that feeds you in all ways and counter productive to consumer integrity/ brand loyalty and developer motivation/ partner encouragement, not to mention trust.If each individual controlled their own digital identity, got paid for the ads on their pages and on a user-generated basis chose what categories those adverts should be to suit their social graph and to ensure maximum relevance, then noone would have to rape your privacy to achieve that by stealth and under the spurious excuse of 'failing forward fast'. Everyone would share freely and the social graph would be trustworthy and free in the spirit of the internet. I also think a platform provider like Facebook would increase revenues tenfold and the Kirkpatrick assertions of altruism might start to be believable. Everything else is just further evidence to the contrary and an against the grain approach. I estimate 60 percent of people or more, judging by blog comments, would rather the latter and have a deepening resentment of Facebook's attitudes, which is a real shame when the original socially expansive and meritocratic promise of Facebook is what it should be most proud of instead of shunning that for corporate ends.