Facebook CEO Apologizes for Ad System

Switches ad platform to 'opt-in' format after users decry involuntary 'sharing'

(NEWSER) - Facebook has watered down its unpopular Beacon ad platform, which "shared" information about users' online shopping habits with everyone in their Facebook network—without their permission. Now, instead of making users opt out every time they make a purchase if they don't want it to be broadcast, Facebook will only broadcast the transaction if user click "ok." More»

Users feel 'creeped out' by advertiser info-sharing platform

(NEWSER) - Facebook execs are pondering changes to the unpopular Beacon advertising platform after massively negative feedback, reports Business Week, and an announcement on "evolving" it could come as soon as today. Users are threatening mutiny over the tool, less than a month old, that tells their friends all about their purchases from other sites—a service many view as an invasion of privacy. More»

Experts offer healthy dose of skepticism

(NEWSER) - After Facebook's IPO filing on Wednesday, analysts are abuzz over a suggested $75 billion to $100 billion valuation. If the social network is to live up to the hype, it'll have to be "the next Google—or better," experts tell MSNBC . Opinions from around the web:

• Sure, 845 million active monthly users and $3 billion in yearly revenue is nothing to sniff at. But a $75 billion valuation would make Facebook worth 40% of Google, whose profits are 11 times the social network's—whose growth may already be slowing, MSNBC notes.

Mark Zuckerberg flies private, and other revelations

(NEWSER) - Facebook has officially filed its 150-page S-1 with the SEC, which means a boatload of new details about the company are officially out in the open. Some things you didn't know before, but do now, by way of the Los Angeles Times , Huffington Post , and New York Times :

• Mark Zuckerberg's annual salary will fall to $1 in 2013, a la Steve Jobs, but this year he'll collect a $600,000 salary, an increase of $100,000 over last year. (Of course, salary, schmalary: He could be worth as much as $28 billion after the IPO; this year's salary is .002% of that amount.)

Mark Zuckerberg and his company aren't used to 'primetime scrutiny'

(NEWSER) - Facebook is finally on its way to becoming a public company, but are Mark Zuckerberg and crew prepared for what that truly means? Guardian columnist (and Newser founder) Michael Wolff has his doubts. "I don't think that Facebook, with its messianic ambitions and squirrelly zeal, is actually ready for the harsh light of public company life," he writes. "It has grown up in such a bubble of cultishness and doctrine, that primetime scrutiny could shortly become very uncomfortable." As a private company, Facebook has been able to stay largely "tightlipped" about everything from financing to privacy policies to its "data thirst." No more. More»