Who's Leaving Facebook Next?
The wheels seem to be coming off at Facebook after the ouster of CFO Gideon Yu. We hear another executive is leaving the social network to spend more time with his family.
Is Former Exec Still Tangled in Facebook's Web?
It's a day of high intrigue at Facebook headquarters, with CFO Gideon Yu leaving abruptly. So why was former COO Owen Van Natta, who left last year, spotted walking out of a Facebook office?
Who's in charge at Facebook?
A tipster reports spotting Mark Zuckerberg in San Francisco today, outside 21st Amendment in San Francisco. He was "having a conversation (all smiles) with two other guys," our tipster tells us. The restaurant and bar is near San Francisco's South-of-Market startup epicenter, so there's any number of reasons…
Facebook flack takes over computing platform
Can a PR guy run an operating system? Silicon Valley's gut reaction: No way. And yet that's what Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has done in appointing Elliot Schrage, her handpicked flack, to run Facebook's platform. The platform, when it launched a year ago, was hailed as the world's next Windows; by opening up its…
Facebook wants developers to build for boring but profitable enterprise market
While Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg tries to convince the world 20 million SuperPoke users have value, her minions are busy trying to convince enterprise developers to build applications that actually do. "One area we've seen a lot of value for the social graph is in the enterprise because it's a completely different…
At OutCast CEO Dinner, Robert Scoble greeted us warmly
FERRY BUILDING, SAN FRANCISCO — Let's be clear: Local PR firm OutCast's CEO Dinner event Thursday night wasn't really a dinner — most people ate standing up. Nor were there many CEOs. (I counted one: Jim Louderback of Revision3.) It's a far cry from years past where the decimated post-bubble survivors of San…
P is for Parker, the Valley's bad boy
Sean Parker has had a hand in some of the Valley's biggest successes. His first company, Napster, took the world by storm, but didn't make Parker rich. His second, Plaxo, just sold to Comcast. And his third, Facebook — well, say no more. Except for the bit about him getting kicked out, according to Mark Zuckerberg's…
Facebook's foolish foes
I remember, distinctly, when former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner's love affair with Facebook began this spring. He couldn't stop talking about it, and I could hardly avoid hearing about it, since my office was next door to his. With all the zeal of a late convert, Quittner evangelized Facebook for most of this…
Mark Zuckerberg demotes his No. 2 exec
Founders never share power willingly, gracefully, or for very long. That's a lesson that Facebook's Owen Van Natta should have learned at the knee of Jeff Bezos, when Van Natta was an executive at Amazon.com. Instead, though, he's been schooled in it by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who just demoted Van Natta from COO…
Facebook's new hire leaps from frying pan to fire
What to make of Chamath Palihapitiya's hire by Facebook? Immediately before joining the red-hot social network, he worked as a venture capitalist for the Mayfield Fund. And last February, he attracted controversy for his comments about the privileged society of Silicon Valley in an art film, Living Pictures/Men in…
Maybe Facebook really is the new AOL: Ex-AOL exec and "serious poker player" Chamath Palihapitiya joins Facebook as VP of product marketing and operations. [WSJ]
Silicon Valley's golden men
This weekend's must-see movie isn't anything out of Hollywood — it's "Living Pictures/Men in Gold" at SFMOMA, a 40-minute video homage to seven Silicon Valley rich dudes. Created by French artist Sylvie Blocher, the video includes interview-montages with Snocap's Rusty Rueff, former Apple exec and "recovering…
