I was so surprised to see Mark Zuckerberg's face on a NY Times "blogging heads" feature titled "McCain In Disarray?"

I didn't know that he was supporting a candidate in this election… or maybe he has something to say about the effectiveness of the candidates' engagement with online communities … ?

Zuckerberg_does_politics_2

No. It turns out that the "BloggingHeads" debate is actually between Chris Hayes of The Nation, and Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard (his face is on the right). I guess it's just a blooper by the New York Times photo department.

I searched around to see if I could find any information about Mark Zuckerberg's political sympathies… Is he a young liberal? Or has does his wealth predispose him to a conservative point of view? Unfortunately, I can't see his full profile on Facebook, which might hold the answer… and I can't see any option to "Add Mark as friend." How did he get rid of that feature on his profile?

Perhaps he is steering clear of politics in the light of this incident that threatened to drag Facebook into a debate about the Middle East. I have some sympathy for him, having recently removed a map of this part of the world from one of my research reports…. It turns out there's a lot more disputed land in Asia than I had ever imagined.