Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, spoke about the future plans of the company at a Huffington Post event in New York, shedding some light on topics we’ve all been wondering about. In the interview, she discussed the various issues surrounding Facebook, including privacy, strategy for mobile devices, recent donations by the company and even the unofficial Facebook movie. Overall Facebook did well as a brand to discuss the issues we’ve been wondering about for some time. Following is a summary of the discussion.

Sandberg reiterated Facebook’s commitment to sharing and connecting. She mentioned that Facebook policy towards mobile devices is most reflective of this standing. Facebook wishes to achieve maximum availability i.e. connecting Facebook via every mobile device. This commitment to maximum compatibility is probably the defining factor in Facebook’s attitude towards Openness. They want to be open enough to allow for Facebook access from “any where possible”.

Facebook privacy, the main point of controversy, was sure to be discussed–and it was. Defending Facebook, Sandberg explained that complicated privacy settings were to blame. Now the Facebook team is focusing efforts to simplify privacy control. Also in the discussion the the importance of privacy for Facebook came up. The company believes people might stop sharing if they lose control of who they are sharing with.

Here take on the next big innovation as reported by the Huffington Post is as follows:

The future is one of personalization. Basically, mass market products have always been produced. They still always will be produced, but they’ll be delivered to people in a much more personal way. […] Going to website that’s totally impersonal I think will be a thing of the past. […] Once people have experienced something personal that’s around their identity and their friends, they won’t want to go back to something that’s targeted at the whole world. I think we’ll see more and more products and services do things like the HuffPost has done and take that step of trying to deliver a more personal experience to users.

The massive network has also overtaken Yahoo in terms of videos viewed, according to this comScore report, placing it at number 2 behind Google.  Facebook already dominates the online photo-sharing market, so this encroachment on video is yet another threat to Google in terms of a growing media platform that can be tapped for semantic search purposes–as soon as Facebook gets that together.

On a lighter note, the movie “The Social Network” was described very different and rather more colorful and fun than actual life of Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Probably, the serious and all work attitude of Mark Zuckerberg lead him and his company to success and riches. The riches that he is now using to help improve the education system in the US.