Facebook, Zuckerberg Cave To Cavedwellers

Chalk one up for the Luddites. The Neanderthals banging their clubs on the cave walls were just too scary, so Mark Zuckerberg backed away from his plans to bring Facebook up to date.Facebook users have protested earlier changes to the site to no avail, but this time their protests paid off. It's too bad.

As I suggested in a post earlier this week, a viral petition passed around among friends is a lot of noise signifying nothing, even if 2 million cries and lamentations make for a lot of noise.

Now, maybe Zuckerberg saw something he's not telling; maybe there's been a significant decrease in visits or page views, or maybe even more discontinued accounts than usual. Now, that would be something different.

But, if as seems to be the case, Facebook did an about-face because of those petitions, Zuckerberg deserves his fate, which is probably to see Facebook overtaken by Twitter.

Robert Scoble made an interesting point about the Facebook redesign on Monday, and added what must be now an embarrassing paean to Zuckerberg's greatness.

Between this and the kerfuffle over Facebook's terms of service, Zuckerberg probably hopes his actions this month are long forgotten in decades.