My habit of long-winded comments on blogs continues, this time in response to Valleywag’s call for Mark Zuckerberg to resign.

My comment:

I wrestle with this one every day. It’s interesting you’ve come down so strong on the resign camp. And while I recognize Zuck’s managerial limitations, I think it’s probably best if he stays. It’s a close call for me, but on balance two arguments win it out for me.

First, what we are all dreaming about for facebook to do is to have another “hit.” We all, I think, are subconsciously secretly hoping it’ll do something awesome, and become totally cool again. OK, maybe we’re not all wishing it, but i think we can all say it’s what they need. And let’s face it, that’s hard. I think I prefer Zuck’s relentless efforts at trying to find that, even when it sometimes fails, like the last redesign. And I can’t think of anyone else who would have the chutzpah, naivete, or balls to keep doing that. Certainly not Marc. Marc would turn it into the good days/parts of Yahoo! – competent, solid, always there, profitable, and boring. And since this thing isn’t public, and it’s my understanding that Zuck still owns the largest share (if not a majority?) and everyone else invested in it with that understanding, they should go for it.

Okay that was a long “one reason” – but I guess we can summarize it as “Facebook needs to keep trying radical things, and Zuck does that like no other.”

Secondly, and this is a bit of a hedge because ultimately Zuck’s responsible, but WTF? He hired a bunch of seasoned, qualified executives, and what did that get him? A COO’s as responsible for this mess as a CEO, especially when they’re the supposedly seasoned executive.

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Zuck should fire Sandberg, issue a mea culpa to the entire company, learn from his mistakes, and keep going. It’ll cost him his licks, but it will fix things, and he’ll learn from it. He’s young, but not too young to learn his lessons and improve from them.