Social media buzzed around Mark Zuckerberg’s comment on Tuesday that he wrote the “founder’s letter” for Facebook’s initial public offering registration statement on his mobile phone. (Big deal – investors who have suffered since must wish he’d used the phone’s computing capacity to set the offer price at a more reasonable level.)

I was more interested in his admission that the social networking group had “burned two years” betting on the wrong mobile technology. For most companies, that doesn’t sound like a long time to spend exploring a potentially highly profitable dead-end, but remember, Mr Zuckerberg hit the button that launched “Thefacebook.com” on February 4 2004. It has barely been in existence eight years. In that context, to burn two years is like Ford (founded 1903) wasting a quarter of a century developing a five-wheel car or General Electric (1892) blowing 30 years exploring the possibilities of a steam-powered lightbulb. Read more