Facebook’s co-founder leaves the company

Source: Exec Digital USA

Date :10/6/2008 6:10:59 AM

Two of Facebook’s top executives have announced that they will leave in a month’s time to set up their own start-up company.

Dustin Moskovitz, the Head Engineer and Co-Founder of Facebook has announced that he will leave with Facebook’s Manager Justin Rosenstein to set up a start-up company building software products.

Moskovitz set up Facebook with roommate Mark Zuckerberg while they were both at Harvard. “Dustin has always had Facebook's best interest at heart and will always be someone I turn to for advice,” said Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, on his own Facebook page.

Launched in 2004, the networking site now has over 100 million active users, and was valued at around US$13.98 billion dollars last year when Microsoft bought a small stake in the company.

Though some analysts have suggested that Facebook’s current Executive turnover rate demonstrates a lack of content, all parties’ statements on the move appear amicable.

New project

In a statement Rosenstein, originally from Google, said that although he was “thrilled” with the time he’d had at Facebook “the new project requires a company built around it from the ground up, with the goals of efficiency and group collaboration embedded deeply into its DNA from day 1.”

Moskovitz echoed Rosenstein’s statement, saying “I wouldn’t have agreed with asking the company [Facebook] to divert significant resources to approach a project so different and so boundless in scope."

Both Moskovitz and Rosenstein have indicated that their as-yet-unnamed software start-up company will continue to work closely with Facebook.