Founder says he made ‘every mistake’ he could make in creating Facebook

WELLINGTON - At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he made ‘every mistake’ he could make while creating the social networking site.

Zuckerberg was pressed on the social network’s past failings by moderator John Battelle.

“There’s something about Facebook … which is that it sort of doesn’t ask for permission, it asks for forgiveness,” Stuff.co.nz quoted Battelle as saying.

“That seems to be a Facebook trait: that [you will] keep pushing that envelope until ‘Oops, sorry’. Is that an intentional point of view?”

Zuckerberg didn’t respond until he was later asked by an audience member to explain how he had dealt with past failings.

He said that users’ love of Facebook meant he was allowed to make mistakes.

“I think I’ve made so many mistakes in running the company so far,” Zuckerberg said.

“Basically, any mistake that you think you can make I’ve probably made or will make in the next few years.

“But, I don’t know, I think, if anything, the Facebook story is a great example of how if you’re building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes.

“I just think that the lesson for other folks … is focus on building something that people really like and that’s very valuable,” he added.

He said one of the company’s board members “used to say ‘There’s 100 problems that you have to deal with right now but only one of two of them probably really matter. So just ignore the rest and put all your effort in the couple of things that really matter’.

“And I just think that for almost any industry or product that you’re in it’s just all about building products that people like. If you do that you can do so much other stuff wrong and like learn from that.” (ANI)