Zuckerberg: Facebook will shift focus to private networks instead of open ones

Mark Zuckerberg discussing issues with an audience. (This time he used a blog post, though.) (credit: Facebook)

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a more-than-3,000-word blog post that seems to declare a major shift in Facebook's strategy. In it, he says he believes that "a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms."

Zuckerberg explains that he wants Facebook to build a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform, and describes his vision thusly:

Public social networks will continue to be very important in people's lives-for connecting with everyone you know, discovering new people, ideas and content, and giving people a voice more broadly. People find these valuable every day, and there are still a lot of useful services to build on top of them. But now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first.

He acknowledges Facebook is an odd fit for this approach, saying, "frankly we don't currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing," but:

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