The departure last week of a Facebook Inc. co-founder highlights a cultural shift that the Internet company faces as it tries to navigate the path from scrappy start-up to big business.The Palo Alto, Calif., company said Friday that Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder and head engineer, will leave Facebook to start his own Internet service. He will be joined by Facebook manager Justin Rosenstein.
The two are the latest Facebook managers -- including the chief technology officer and an executive who once served as chief operating officer -- who have left the company this year.
As a number of Facebook's earliest employees move on, its ranks are being stacked with senior executives from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other established technology companies.
Among the changes they've brought are new guidelines for performance reviews, new recruiting processes and training programs.
The company is also expanding rapidly overseas and recently said it plans to open an international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
Facebook is moving through the "type of evolution you see among young growing companies and specifically young growing companies in Silicon Valley," said Larry Yu, a Facebook spokesman.
Founded in 2004 by Mr. Moskovitz and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg while undergraduates at Harvard, Facebook's popularity has exploded: It now has more than 100 million users and 700 employees.
The company is trying to tap into the growing amount of advertising dollars flowing online. It has made progress: This year Facebook's revenue is expected to reach $300 million to $350 million. But much of that comes through a display-ad sales agreement with Microsoft Corp., which has a small stake.
Facebook is trying to expand its advertising business by using information gleaned from people who use its site -- such as what college they went to -- to tailor advertisements to them.
On Nov. 1, the company will begin allowing employees to sell a portion of their Facebook shares at the company's internal accounting valuation, currently $4 billion, say people familiar with the plan.
By: Robert Guth and Jessica Vascellaro
Wall Street Journal; October 6, 2008
