Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

Maybe.

Because only a Dumbf*uck gets their asterisk all fcuked up in Dumb*uck right?

Or maybe not.

Maybe someone leaked some bogus IMs to the Business Insider who published them because they were just too rich not to publish them. And leaked them just at the moment that Facebook was vulnerable to privacy issues to get people even more rilled up.

But, whatever.

Lots of other people are reporting on a supposed IM exchange that Zuckerberg had with a “friend” (was it a chick?) back when he was 19. Some “friend” huh?

The reported IM conversation goes something like this:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Dumb f*ucks.

Leo says he’s shutting down his Facebook account. That came out earlier today though and was more in response to something that Jason Calacanis wrote I think.

Scoble offers the Zuckster some friendly advice.

I still think photos look like crap on Facebook. On that Flickrtab thing that I set up over there it seems like it stopped showing thumbnails entirely on my wall today. Anybody got any nails that they can loan me for a few weeks to finish building my barn please?

So here’s the thing with this Dumbfc*uck*k Fackebookery thing. It doesn’t matter *what* business you are in. You just can not refer to your customers as Dumpfucks. It just does not fly. People get insulted. It sounds condescending.

Now Facebookery can do one of two things. They can address this or they can ignore.

By ignoring it they are saying that transparency doesn’t matter and that they think very little of their users. And maybe they have enough addicts to get by with this. But that sucks.

Or they can address it. They can either deny it if the IMs are bogus. Or if they are in fact legit, they can get the PR team working overtime on sending out a message that it was a youthful indiscretion by a 19 year old kid who deeply regrets sending those IMs and who has done a lot of growing up in the past 8 years or whatever it is since he supposedly sent them. Maybe even put out a photo of the chick he was IMing with at the time if they think that might help.

Personally I think they should address it. Otherwise people might stop working on all their farms maybe.

Oh, and you can find my dumbass on Facebook here. Add me and I’ll add you back. Especially if you have a dumbf*cker camera over your face in your avatar like I do.

Update: Facebook has apparently now responded to this story. Good thing. Unfortunately the gist of their response is that they won’t address the IMs.

Everyone within the company understands our success is inextricably linked with people’s trust in the company and the service we provide. We are grateful people continue to place their trust in us. We strive to earn that trust by trying to be open and direct about the evolution of the service and sharing information on how the 400 million people on the service can use the available settings to control where their information appears.”