Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret
Taylor explains some details of Facebook's new application Open Graph
during a keynote at the Facebook f8 Developer Conference at the San
Francisco Design Center in San Francisco in 2011 in California. Taylor
on Friday announced he is leaving the world's leading social network to
start a new company with a friend.
Facebook's chief technical officer Bret Taylor on
Friday announced he is leaving the world's leading social network to
start a new company with a friend.
Taylor revealed the move on his Facebook page
less than a month after an initial public offering (IPO) of stock
reported to have made millionaires of about a thousand of the California
company's employees.
"I've really enjoyed working with Bret and
getting to know him as a friend and teammate," Facebook founder and
chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an email response to an AFP
inquiry.
"I'm grateful for all he has done for Facebook and I'm proud of what he and his teams have built."
Taylor cited accomplishments including the
"open graph" that lets outside websites or applications synch with the
social network and mobile products such as Facebook Camera and
integration with Apple gadgets.
"I'm sad to be leaving, but I'm excited to be
starting a company with my friend Kevin Gibbs," Taylor said, not
indicating what the new enterprise would be.
"While a transition like this is never easy, I'm extremely confident in the teams and leadership we have in place."
He referred to Zuckerberg not only as his boss for three years, but as among his closest friends.
It is common for startup employees made rich
by the initial public offering of stock to depart companies to pursue
dreams or new endeavors, according to analysts who anticipated that
might happen at Facebook.
By far the Internet's dominant social
network, Facebook went public on May 18 in a $16 billion share sale, the
second largest IPO in the United States ever.
The run-up to the sale was marked by bubbly
enthusiasm reminiscent of the dot-com era, to the extent that lead
underwriter Morgan Stanley agreed to raise the offering price and
increase the number of shares issued.
But the shares barely held above the $38
introductory price on the opening day and have since fallen, delivering
real and paper losses in the billions of dollars to the new investors.
Facebook shares rose six percent to close at $30.01 Friday.© 2012 AFP Retweet this story
No comments:
Post a Comment