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Zuckerberg says it's time for Facebook to become a "Social Business"

The 2.8+ million followers of the Mark Zuckerberg page on Facebook saw an unusual update hit their walls yesterday from the firm's founder and CEO.
Written by Daniel Kennedy, Contributor

The 2.8+ million followers of the Mark Zuckerberg page on Facebook saw an unusual update hit their walls yesterday from the firm's founder and CEO.

Mark Zuckerberg's fan page on Facebook briefly featured a post, complete with misspellings, indicating he would consider a whole new revenue model for the social media titan: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it?

Short lived post on the Zuckerberg fan page, 1/25/2010.

Short lived post on the Zuckerberg fan page, 1/25/2010.

The shortened link pointed to the Wikipedia entry for "Social Business". In a social business, the objective is to address some social cause as the firm's reason for existence. The concept is credited largely to Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Owners and investors can recoup their initial monetary outlay, but nothing beyond that, as profits are used exclusively to improve the company's ability to achieve its stated mission.

With Yunus that business is Grameen Bank, a bank that provides small loans to poor people without requiring collateral.

The hash tag reference #hackercup2011 refers to Facebook's Hacker Cup, an annual programming competition, although the reference makes little sense here.

TechCrunch is declaring the page was hacked, however Facebook has not said one way or the other what happened. If it was Mark, he probably did not discuss this model with his new investors, courtesy of Goldman Sachs, ahead of time. Most of them are probably not up for running Facebook as a business that does not deliver a return to its investors.

If the page was hacked, and it likely was, give the attacker credit for posting a message that actually sounds like it could have come from Zuckerberg, instead of something like "owned by insert name here".

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