The hundreds of millions they took from Microsoft should not be thought of as a venture capital investment. It isn't made by people that are engineering a 5x +

The hundreds of millions they took from Microsoft should not be thought of as a venture capital investment. It isn't made by people that are engineering a 5x + ROI and that maneuvered for the power to prevent Facebook from exiting with anything less. As I understand it, it was largely an advertising deal. I think Beacon is a lot like the news/mini feeds. Both were radical ideas that faced heavy privacy opposition. Facebook rode out the wave once and seemed to be planning to do it again, but I think they miscalculated on one thing: since Beacon is openly commercial, Facebook looks more evil than misguided. I think there's a new idea behind Beacon that is plainly good: aggregating stuff about your friends that's happening in the general internet. (Paul Buchheit's new company is doing this.) The right move would have been to release that function with no commercial facet, and work that in later when this idea is no longer new.