Forrester CEO George Colony thinks Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is overrated as a CEO and he gives a pretty compelling case to go along with that assertion. 

I agree with a lot of what he says but I think he underestimates Facebook (and in doing so underestimates Zuckerberg).  Particularly I disagree with this statement…

Now Zuckerberg may eventually earn all of these accolades, but it hasn't happened yet. His one big idea hasn't morphed far from its original form. The great CEOs in technology navigate their companies through product change, brutal competitive threats, shifts in architecture, and highly fickle customers. We didn't declare Andy Grove a great CEO based on Intel's domination of the dynamic random access memory market.

I’d suggest Mr. Colony take another look at that original idea. 

Facebook has grown from a few static pages into an advertising company, an application platform, an identity platform, a content management system and a social site.  All of these things were considered separate products before Facebook came along.

(For example Facebook demolished classmates.com as an after thought)

More significant though is they dominate most of those areas.  When you consider how important each is to the future of computing you see how much Facebook really has grown. 

Identity management alone could turn Facebook into the next Microsoft. 

So while Zuckerberg may not be the management messiah he deserves a lot of credit for moving the company consistently forward and leveraging the company’s assets in a way that creates successful new businesses.   Businesses of sizable strategic value. 

Until the company is made public and we see what’s going on behind the scenes I don’t think anyone can call him a great CEO.  But Zuckerberg’s already proven he’s more than a one trick pony as far as I’m concerned.