Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg drove Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to shed his patented hoodie on stage at the Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference last week.
Apparently all the questions about privacy, or lack thereof, made the young executive sweat in what journalists are now calling his Nixon moment.
So now we know that Zuck is intent on “Making the World More Open and Connected.” And that he believes in this mission enough to wear a Mason-like insignia on the inside of his company-issued hoodie. What a geek. I hope no one at Facebook has this insignia tattooed on their pale backside.
According to Mashable, “Facebook is becoming more and more ambitious, transforming from a simple network for your friends to a utility to make the world more open and connected.”
Despite the privacy fiasco, don’t expect the world’s largest social network to relent from its path. It intends to keep opening up the platform and connecting the web through its platform and the new Open Graph. Only by doing this will Zuckerberg and his team succeed in becoming the central connection of the entire world.
Is Zuckerberg wearing the insignia under his hoodie bizarre? Yes, but perhaps not to him. You can bet that he believes in the mission statement with every fiber of his being, and nothing — not even a bad performance at D8 — is going to stand in his way.
Hat tip to SF Weekly for rendering the Facebook insignia from blown up photographs taken during the D8 event.