Mark Zuckerberg Gives Up Privacy Controls

“SNL” appearance marks the latest suggestion that the Facebook founder reluctantly realizes that “The Social Network” may be the second-best thing to ever happen to him.

News last week that someone hacked Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page elicited, no doubt, schadenfreude-driven chuckles amid constant concerns about privacy on the half-billion-member social networking site.

But Zuckerberg these days seems to be giving up his own privacy controls – and appears ready to deliver some intentional laughs at his own expense, as evidenced by his cameo on “Saturday Night Live,” in which he briefly parried with his movie doppelganger Jessie Eisenberg.

Zuckerberg, at least initially, couldn’t have been happy with “The Social Network,” a fictionalized flick that portrays him, at best, as an arrogant kid with no social skills, and at worst, a schemer ready to betray his friends in a mouse click.

But “The Social Network” may be the second best thing that ever happened to Zuckerberg. Since the movie’s release last fall, his company’s value has grown to a reported $50 billion, he made an impressive showing on “60 Minutes” and was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

He’s gone from the name behind Facebook to the face of Facebook as he inches, between the movie, press accolades and the TV appearances (and we’ll include Andy Samberg’s imitation of him), toward becoming the king of all (social) media.

Zuckerberg seems to have accepted, if not embraced, a very old media precept: Let ‘em say what they want about you, as long as they get the name right.

Not that he’s quite ready for primetime – or even late night – when it comes to comedy. The awkwardness of his meeting Eisenberg and Samberg was the joke, but was compounded by his own stiff performance. Zuckerberg did, though, manage to get off the line of the night: “Those guys are such nerds,” he said of Eisenberg and Samberg. “Come on – I invented poking!”

Showing a sense of humor certainly won’t hurt Zuckerberg’s image, given how he came off in the movie. But in the long term, he’s probably not destined to become one of those larger than life characters – like Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Donald Trump or even Steve Jobs – who, at times, outshine the brands they helped create. We suspect Zuckerberg will settle for emulating Bill Gates, another Harvard dropout wunderkind who took some time to grow into his tech statesman role.

Perhaps sensing a shift in Zuckerberg’s public reputation or maybe feeling a little guilty, Aaron Sorkin, the hyper-articulate writer of “The Social Network,” tried to make nice when he won a Golden Globe for the screenplay this month.

"I wanted to say to Mark Zuckerberg, if you're watching tonight, Rooney Mara's character makes a prediction at the beginning of the movie, she was wrong. You turned out to be a great entrepreneur, a visionary and an altruist," Sorkin said.

He apparently was referring, in part, to Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to the Newark school system around the time of the movie’s release and his pledge last month to give away half his fortune.

It’s unclear, though, whether the 26-year-old billionaire is on the same page as his hacker, who posted a note in his name asking: “If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way?”

It’s a good question, and we’ll ask one of our own, albeit of less import: If “The Social Network” wins the Best Picture Academy Award next month, will Zuckerberg join the film's creators on stage? The Oscar, in some respects, would be his award as much as theirs – and Facebook, if nothing else, is about sharing.

'Twilight' Star Talks Privacy, Money in Vogue

Kristen Stewart is living an atypical life for a 20-year-old.

Ever since she took on the role of Bella Swan in the "Twilight" films, she's crossed over into youth-idol status where emotions run high and she has zero privacy.

The actress says in the February issue of Vogue magazine that she can't go to a shopping mall and that it bothers her she can't be outside often.

Stewart is working on the final two films in the saga and says her wish is for the fans to be happy with the outcome.

Now that "Twilight" has made her a star, Stewart tells the magazine, she's trying to figure out what to do with the money she's made from her work. Stewart says it would be "amazing" to help fund halfway houses for people who need their kind of support.

Owen Wilson Proves Celebrity Privacy Possible

We hear a lot of whining from celebrities about how they have no privacy, how they can't lives their lives away from the cameras and a prying media and generally how it is just so hard to be them. But some celebrities do have privacy, and Owen Wilson proved this week that living your life away from the cameras is indeed possible.

We learned yesterday that Wilson is about to be a proud papa --- not nine months from now but any day. That means that Wilson has been able to keep girlfriend Jade Duell's pregnancy under wraps for the better part of a year. And it isn't like the actor has been away from the spotlight. He released two big movies in the past two months, the romantic comedy 'How Do You Know?' with Reese Witherspoon and 'Little Fockers.'

Wilson had every opportunity to share his happy news, but he opted to keep his personal life personal, proving that stars can be left alone if that's what they want.

But for most of them, it isn't what they really want.

"Celebrities only have to reveal what they want us to know. Here is yet another example of how a star can have a private life if they so choose," says 'Cult of Celebrity' author Cooper Lawrence. "This is a good lesson to remember the next time something 'leaks out' about a star and they act horrified that it did."

Lawrence explains that celebrity really is a creation of publicists, agents and managers, all of whom decide what we can and can't know about a star.

"When they sell us this image it makes us feel like we have an all-access pass to their lives and they are open to us," Lawrence says. "Thus, we get used to thinking that we know them and that we are entitled to every bit of information about them."

But we really just get what they want to give us, and Wilson didn't want to give us his girlfriend's pregnancy until it was almost over.

There's a lesson here for celebs prone to complain about their lack of privacy. Go to Hawaii and shut your trap. You'll be left alone if that's what you really want, but we don't think you do.