Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has published an open letter via The Washington Post, in which he basically admits that Facebook has ballsed-up lately when it comes to the services' privacy settings.

Zuckergerg said: "Sometimes we move too fast -- and after listening to recent concerns, we're responding... Whenever we make a change, we try to apply the lessons we've learned along the way. The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark".

We told you on Friday how Sophos had conducted a small poll of around 1500 people in which 16 per cent had said they had quit Facebook over privacy concerns and another 60 per cent said they were considering quitting. Although this is only a tiny sample of the 100 gazillion people that use Facebook, it isn't the sort of coverage that Zuckerberg would have welcomed. And, it seems, he has now acted.

The letter gets a bit mushy with the Facebook founder gushing how Facebook allows for a "better world". Actually, see if you can read the paragraph yourself without retching just a little bit:

"If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today".

Cheesy indeed. But at least Facebook seems to be doing something about the privacy concerns. Zuckerberg promises that, going forward, the privacy options will be much simpler.

We don't actually think that they're all that difficult at the moment, but if the simpler options mean that our Mums will stop ringing us up to ask what options she should select then we're all for it.