Mark Zuckerberg, boss of Facebook has been cornered into making a half hearted apology to users after mounting anger at changes to the social networking site's privacy policy.

The growing trend for sharing more and more of users’ private information with third parties may mean the second most popular website in the world after Google has reached its high watermark.

Previous fans of the site are switching off their accounts in droves after charges that the company is continuing to to erode its privacy policy. Facebook now wants to share information about users with partners like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft. This should hardly come as a surprise to users, although maybe it does to those gullible enough to think they are Zuckerburg’s customers.

Members or users are not his customers; users are simply a list of people he has information about. Information he can use to make money from Facebook’s true customers, advertisers.

For without advertising revenue Facebook is worth zero. The way the business model is designed the more Facebook can segment information about users the more attractive these user lists become, and correspondingly the more expensive they become.

Put simply the more Facebook knows about its users the more it can charge advertisers for access to this information.

In 2005 Facebook’s privacy policy was simple. No information would be shared with anyone who wasn’t a member of one of their groups. Simple. Have a look at it now it would test the finest information and copyright QC to interpret.

Now that Facebook has sucked in 500 million members it’s payback time. And the bill is going to be paid with information members are submitting unwittingly thinking it’s all confidential.