Facebook privacy settings at the center of a heated debate. (Creative Commons)

They say curiosity killed the cat.

But as the social media giant continues its trek toward Internet domination, perhaps curiosity will eventually kill Facebook.

This week, Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a remorseful public announcement, apologizing to the site's more than 400 million worldwide users for what he excuses as a bad case of growing pains. The site's designers and engineers may have gotten just a little out of hand.

"We don't pretend that we are perfect," Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. "It's been a big shift along the way, and it hasn't always been smooth."

The rough patch Zuckerberg is referring to is something many Facebook users have loudly taken notice of. In recent months, the site has had numerous interface facelifts, loosening privacy controls and allowing the sharing of user information with other third-party websites. Log on to Facebook while surfing the Web and suddenly your individual preferences and those of your friends are vulnerable to a slew of other Facebook-partnered developers including top news outlets and popular blogs.

Zuckerberg called the recent changes and easy access to Facebook-friendly sites a program of "instant personalization." Not exactly.

Unfortunately for him, many fans of the site disagree with the new plan of information openness, feeling Facebook is getting a wee bit too personal.

In fact, while Facebook's online collaboration across the World Wide Web may seem like a huge corporate win (no doubts there), the lax privacy alterations have gotten more than a few online junkies in quite the stir.

As businesses and advertisers become more infused in Facebook's daily function, loyal users once again saw it as a deceitful step away from the site's original social media purpose in order for Facebook to further expand, both virtually and financially.

Hoping to extinguish the heat, Zuckerberg's quick apology leaves him a few days of begging time before May 31, the date of a confirmed Facebook event when more than 22,000 confirmed guests plan to delete their accounts.

The campaign was first started by website Quit Facebook Today which blasted the site for its lack of transparency, saying that the site's actions are only a "symptom [to] a larger set of issues." Predicting what could be a disastrous trend, Quit Facebook Today suggests that the Internet's future will only continue to strip us of our privacy, of course with Facebook as the offending model.

With the privacy debate spilling out on the social media scene, the question remains: How much is too much?

Undoubtedly, social media offers a dynamic way of modern-day communication for a whole range of social groups--from college students to senior citizens (the site's fastest growing demographic of users). Personal interactions force us to sacrifice some personal information to the public. However, until all the corporate mumbo jumbo messed up the perfect social media equation of Facebook, things were good.

Though some of the changes to incorporate third-party sites (such as links and badges) as well as cosmetic improvements are understandable, Zuckerberg and his band of hyperactive engineers should take a note: don't fix something that's not broken. Nearly six years and countless site relaunches later, Facebook is no longer just a place for friends (like MySpace), but it is equally used by companies and business people alike to network, promote and advertise.

Thankfully, Zuckerberg is responding to the backlash. We get it, he's a businessman set on transforming digital communication. But unless Facebook wants to risk losing its core audience, he needs to quickly find the balance between achieving greater site traffic and financial wealth without sacrificing our sensitive personal data as his precious gambling bait. If the rambunctious 26-year-old entrepreneur wants to revolutionize the world he can do it, but he can't exploit the faithful users of his user-generated model.

With a boycott on the horizon, he'll just have to get creative.