Facebook’s Zuckerberg In the Hot Seat In Upcoming “60 Minutes” Interview

This Sunday night, one of the “60 Minutes” segments on CBS will feature an interview with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There’s a snippet of the interview on the CBS website together with an article that previews the segment. In the video excerpt of the interview Zuckerberg looks uncomfortable as Lesley Stahl asks him about the Beacon controversy and the challenge of leveraging the social graph for the benefit of advertisers, while safeguarding user privacy.

Most Facebook users, despite the uproar over Beacon and related privacy issues, were largely ignorant of the controversy, which hasn’t hurt Facebook traffic and usage.

While the Facebook demographic isn’t consistent with the core audience of 60 Minutes, the program has wide influence. The segment will test the axiom, “There’s no such thing as bad press.” The story should offer a mixed portrait of Zuckerberg and Facebook. I would imagine it will play like this: wealthy wunderkind and online phenomenon compromises user privacy. It could either alert more people to privacy concerns on Facebook or, in accordance with the “no bad press” axiom, add more momentum to Facebook’s astounding ascent.

Apparently, in the interview Zuckerberg also says Facebook won’t go public in 2008. The 60 Minutes interview will be broadcast on CBS this Sunday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Postscript From Danny: See my Facebook To IPO In 2008 (It’ll Have To) on why Facebook may indeed have to go public. With 400 employees now, they’re likely only 100 hires away from needing to do a filing.