In defense of the ignorant (Mark Zuckerberg).

Most of you know that I very rarely defend the rights of idiots to be... well, idiotic.  The time has come for me, however, to try and put up a small defense of Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Now please understand, I have fun laughing at this tool too.  He has done some amazingly stupid things lately, and I guess he still refuses to hire someone to polish his image a bit.  His latest fiasco with the iPhone has been pulled from his Facebook page (I wonder why?)

(For those of you unaware, he bought an iPhone this weekend and then posted that he had trouble with it, needed 4 chargers and a land line or some-such and got pretty soundly beaten up for being retarded.)

Lets look at his track record, lately...

- Facebook privacy issues.  Well, this was handled about as badly as anyone could have fumbled it.  He made Adrian Peterson and Eddie George look like great ball handlers.  How do you manage to blow something that big, and then continue to blow it day in/day out for so long?

- Interviews and sweatshirts with cryptic symbols.  I won't go into it, google it of you like.  Suffice to say that looking like a lost little child in front of your peers, pundits and the whole tech twitterazzi is a foolish idea.

- Posting on facebook that you're not quite as competent to manipulate an iPhone as the average...say... 8 year old.  Really dude?  Come on, you didn't really think that the whole world would see your post, have an epiphany and move back to the Palm Pre, did you?

In his defense, however I will say these two things...

1. He is 25 for god's sake.  He's also a multi-gozillionaire and CEO of a pretty heavy-hitter of a company.  At 25 most of us were burned out from college/military life and thinking about career choices.  This guy is thinking about which Bentley to drive today... the black or the yellow private jet... hmmm.  Young people are generally ignorant and have to learn by experience.  Mr. Zuckerberg is filling up his experience bag really fast and will be the better for it.


2. He wrote a massively useful and worthwhile web app (Face Book) and made it into a huge company.  Why do we all of a sudden think that this makes him a wise and thoughtful CEO and technology mover/shaker?  He is capable of making the same, or better,  stupid mistakes as anyone.  His problem is his dumb mistakes end up on CNN while ours end up on a few friends iPhones and other picture cams...  The guy has no experience in managing security postures and concerns for millions of people and made some bad decisions.  He is trying to fix them, lighten up, people.  Warren Buffet wasn't a brilliant investor at 25 (or was he, not sure, have to Wiki that one...), Bill Gates wasn't brilliant at 25... well, he was, but he made his (huge) share of mistakes too.

So let's all lighten up a bit on poor Mark.  He is getting thrashed just because he is successful.  But do remember, that he is laughing all the way to the bank, and he who dies with the biggest bank account wins.  Mark is winning...