Top Facebook Executives bolt as Zuckerberg takes a wrecking ball to Facebook

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Chris Cox, one of Facebook’s early engineers and a close friend of Mr. Zuckerberg abruptly stepped down Thursday. WhatsApp unit head Chris Daniels also stepped down on Thursday.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is remaking the company to focus more on private messaging—and less on public sharing, the very thing that Facebook is. It’s hard to imagine people trusting Facebook with their private messages. They won’t. Or that folks even need another messaging app. They don’t. Add to that the Herculean task of creating new ways of making money besides the advertising machine that currently generates 98% of Facebook’s revenue (based on Facebook’s current model). In decades to come, this is going to be a business school textbook case of how one of the most successful companies in history willfully self-destructed.

This is a terrible idea. Let’s be real here. Mark Zuckerberg is not an idea man. He is great at stealing and/or buying other people’s great ideas. He is not known for having great ideas. And this shift from what made Facebook great to something else entirely is, in a word, nuts.

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  • Facebook on Thursday announced that its chief product officer, Chris Cox, and Chris Daniels, the head of WhatsApp, were leaving the company.
  • A telling line in Cox’s goodbye letter suggests there were significant disagreements over Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to pivot Facebook to privacy.
  • This was backed up by a report in The New York Times, which said there were frustrations over Zuckerberg’s vision for the company.

Two Top Facebook Executives Are Departing

Exits come days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to shift Facebook’s focus more to private messaging and communications

By: Wall Street Journal March 14, 2019:

A senior Facebook Inc. executive viewed as a potential successor to Mark Zuckerberg abruptly stepped down Thursday, signaling that he disagrees with the CEO’s new focus on private messaging at the social-networking giant.

Chris Cox, one of Facebook’s early engineers and a close friend of Mr. Zuckerberg, said he decided to leave the company to enable new leadership to pull off the shift in direction. Ten months ago, Mr. Cox was promoted to oversee the company’s three main platforms: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

WhatsApp unit head Chris Daniels also stepped down on Thursday.

The moves together show that Mr. Zuckerberg’s stated plan to focus more on private messaging—and less on public sharing—is roiling the company he founded, including a second management shuffle in less than a year.

While Mr. Cox, 36 years old, didn’t explicitly state a reason for his departure, he said Facebook’s pivot would benefit from different leadership. In a previous role, Mr. Cox oversaw the Facebook News Feed, which will be less prominent under the new structure Mr. Zuckerberg is planning.

“This will be a big project and we will need leaders who are excited to see the new direction through,” Mr. Cox wrote in a statement. He thanked Mr. Zuckerberg for “creating this place, and for the chance to work beside a dear friend for over thirteen years.”

A week ago, Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook plans to offer encrypted messaging across all its major products and allow people to make conversations ephemeral. That would boost privacy and enable conversations held more like in a living room, rather than the public square, and also allow the company to offer more services such as payments and e-commerce within those messaging services.

Doing so, however, requires the company to perfect new ways of making money besides the advertising machine that currently generates 98% of its revenue and pursue other priorities besides driving growth to the existing platforms.

While the outlines are clear, Facebook has offered few details and company officials have acknowledged significant open questions about what the shared messaging platform and business model would look like. Personnel changes announced Thursday indicate Mr. Zuckerberg is putting in place a management team that is fully on board with the new direction.

“While it is sad to lose such great people, this also creates opportunities for more great leaders who are energized about the path ahead to take on new and bigger roles,’ Mr. Zuckerberg said in the Facebook post announcing the moves.

In the wake of Mr. Cox’s departure, Fidji Simo has been promoted to oversee the Facebook app, and Will Cathcart will replace Mr. Daniels as the head of WhatsApp. Those executives and current Instagram chief Adam Mosseri will report to Mr. Zuckerberg directly, while Antonio Lucio, who joined the company as chief marketing officer last year, will report to Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Mr. Zuckerberg also said Javier Olivan would oversee integrating messaging and direct “where our apps should be more integrated.”

“Whenever there is a shift in strategy, it’s not unusual to see some personnel changes,” said eMarketer senior analyst Jasmine Enberg. “What we do know is that Zuckerberg has a new vision for Facebook that will be more focused on private communication. That’s a big shift for the company, which was built around public sharing.”

Facebook’s leadership was unusually stable for most of the first dozen years or so following its launch from Mr. Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm in 2004. Over the past 18 months or so, though, the company has been buffeted by a number of management changes that have one common denominator: a disagreement with Mr. Zuckerberg over strategic changes.

The founders of WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook’s hugely successful acquisitions, left the company during 2017 and 2018. WhatsApp’s Brian Acton and Jan Koum disagreed with Mr. Zuckerberg’s plans to monetize the messaging service, while Instagram’s Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger grew frustrated over a number of changes Mr. Zuckerberg was pushing on the photo-sharing app, which had previously enjoyed considerable autonomy.

Mr. Cox was viewed as a stable lieutenant, having worked closely alongside Mr. Zuckerberg for more than a decade.

“Chris Cox leaving is depressing” said BTIG Research analyst Rich Greenfield, adding that “Chris has made it easier for himself to leave by building the teams he has over the years.”

Prior to Mr. Cox’s promotion last year, he oversaw the core Facebook product, where growth has begun to slow. Though still producing the overwhelming majority of the company’s revenue, the platform has approached saturation in some markets and seen user activity plateau or decline in others.

Mr. Zuckerberg obliquely referenced social-media users’ changing preferences in announcing the company’s pivot to messaging last week. While user-activity metrics are closely held by the company, a series of independent research firms suggest the share of Facebook users who regularly post status updates and photos has been falling, while the numbers who are chatting one-to-one or in small groups is on the rise.

Mr. Daniels’s departure, while less high-profile, is also notable. As head of WhatsApp, he oversaw the hugely popular messaging service that many regarded as a template for what Mr. Zuckerberg hopes to create across the company. Mr. Daniels joined Facebook in 2011 after stints at Microsoft Corp. and Lehman Brothers, and before his WhatsApp assignment he ran Internet.org, the company’s effort to push a free, Facebook-flavored product around the globe.

Mr. Daniels wasn’t available for comment.

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Halal Bacon
Halal Bacon
5 years ago

as for the New Zealand shooter, “lone wolf” like shitslam attackers or workplace incident? why so soon to name the perp?

or mental issues, let him out in 6 months?

but let in ISIS fucktards and give them teddy bears?

Shooter bad, orange man’s fault ~CNN Breaking news

felix1999
felix1999
5 years ago
Reply to  Halal Bacon

He’s white. They will throw the book at him.
It other white people helped him, they will also be punished to the max.

‘Something happened during his travels’: The boy who turned into a Muslim-hating mass killer and murdered 49 in New Zealand after his dad died of cancer and he left Australia to travel the world including North Korea and Pakistan.

By MARK BROOK FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
PUBLISHED: 07:02 EDT, 15 March 2019 |
UPDATED: 11:24 EDT, 15 March 2019

* Mosque gunman who killed 49 is revealed as country boy from a small town in Australia’s New South Wales
* Tarrant grew up in Grafton in the Northern River in the state’s most north-easterly region
* The self-proclaimed ‘ordinary, white man’ live-streamed shooting at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on Friday
* The 28-year-old’s ranting online manifesto is filled with Neo Nazi ideology and hatred for Muslim people
* Tarrant worked as a personal trainer before travelling the world to North Korea and Pakistan as well as Europe
* One of his former acquaintances suspected the 28-year-old man was radicalised in some way on his travels

In his manifesto, Tarrant (pictured) described himself as an ‘ordinary, white man’, who was born into a working class, low income family of Scottish, Irish and English decent. comment image

Daily Mail:
“Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.”

D A
D A
5 years ago
Reply to  felix1999

He was ” radicalized “….. ???? North Korea and Pakistan ??

Perhaps he was a stealth jihadi operative ? Just a thought.

felix1999
felix1999
5 years ago
Reply to  D A

The guy was a nutcase but smart enough to see the evil of Islam.

D A
D A
5 years ago
Reply to  felix1999

Ain’t hard to see that inherent evil is it ?…. with even a modicum of sense ?….. yikes what a mess…… this guy and islam both !

James Jones
James Jones
5 years ago
Reply to  felix1999

Speaking strictly from a tactical view, a one off like this, has a very limited chance of creating the the kind of response he was apparently looking for. Conversely, its’ failure has a very good chance of generating the opposite response. It is like blood in the water for the Left crowd.
He may well have seen things in Pakistan that pushed him into irrational thinking – there’s some stomach turning stuff there if you golookabout.
The coming world coup is going to be far from bloodless and anyone who thinks rhetorical channels remain an answer, are fooling themselves. Frankly I don’t see a solution, nor a way to stop what’s already on shore, much less what’s coming. For those who think their gnus are an answer beyond self defense – better have your affairs in order because that’s a one way street.

This guy doesn’t sound like a complete nut job, even though his actions were selfish and poorly thought thru, he recognized the inevitability of either a slow but assured death by a thousand cuts or recognizing the war already being waged. The whole frog in the slowly coming to boil pot of water, is a reasonable assessment of what the West is facing, and if you didn’t have a good handle on the bigger picture of God’s agenda, you might think a desperate move is needed to shake people awake.
While I believe “Islam is the problem”, its’ adherents cannot be just dismissed. Most are just zombie followers, and the fewer are the hysterical jihadis, but there’s a core of stealth supporters behind them that could easily “hear the call”. But the keepers at the gate are the instruments through which this evil is coming in – attacking one of their beachheads is going to make no dent whatsoever in the mechanism of treachery in control.
If I thought that taking the fight to “them” was a path to even consider, there would be some of what this guy’s thinking, as far as assessment goes, that is not unreasonable. Take what’s happening out a few more years and his expressed fears would be near reality, and while in consideration, I wouldn’t have supported his method (wrong target for one thing), he at least wasn’t willing to do nothing, even though it was the wrong thing to do.

I say all this but bear in mind, I do know the “bigger” picture and what’s coming, so I know that our response is very limited, and I’ve already said I don’t believe there is a “solution” – there is no fixing this one. His judgement is coming, and for many, unfortunately, it won’t be pretty.

Pathfinder0100
Pathfinder0100
5 years ago
Reply to  James Jones

Ya know James, I look at what is going on in Europe now and I have just gotta agree with ya!! Damn! I never had a clue that my last couple of years of my journey would see the destruction of the Country I served for 8 years during the Korean War Era and after. Sometimes I think that our greatest threat is our OWN Government and that places Islam as second. What to do—What to do?????

James Jones
James Jones
5 years ago
Reply to  Pathfinder0100

Pathfinder, we certainly are in unknown territory, and its’ got plenty of elements that are unnerving to say the least. The “what to do” is one of the biggest.
Both this guy and that Brevik guy from Norway years ago who shot up a political office and a youth camp, left “manifestos” (lengthy ones at that) trying to explain their actions.
Brevik apparently had similar thoughts regarding the “invasion” and its’ ultimate affect on the indigenous population, as this guy did, but tried to address it through political office. His marginalization and demonization by everything and everyone “left”, led to his complete disillusionment of the political route. Although this NZ guy was apolitical (both are self-described fascists) , he came to the identical conclusions, but actually wanted to fan the flames intentionally to induce an exaggerated response that freedom loving people would finally object to.
Both surmised that voices such as theirs carried no weight, while others continue to hope that one day the message will eventually get through. There is a danger of course in underestimating your opposition and thus failing to act with enough force before it’s too late, or in acting either too soon or inadequately and having that failure being used against your cause. I’m not smart enough to know exactly where we are on the “scale of doom”, but if we haven’t reached the tipping point yet, its’ got to be very close and time is more their friend then ours.

David Wood has some excellent commentary on both these guys (YouTube), and Paul Joseph Watson recently put out a YouTube video “The collapse of Western Civilization” that is well worth the 10 minutes – one of his best. Watson may be a Christian, but the video gives an almost exclusively secular analysis. It is by no means coincidental that the points and conclusions in his video align perfectly with endtime prophecy.

D A
D A
5 years ago
Reply to  D A

This is kinda what I was getting at:

NZ Killer: ” Nation with the values closest to my own is the People’s Republic of China” :

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/03/15/christchurch-manifesto-values-china/

D A
D A
5 years ago
Reply to  D A

This is kinda what I was getting at:

NZ Killer: ” Nation with the values closest to my own is the People’s Republic of China” :

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/03/15/christchurch-manifesto-values-china/

felix1999
felix1999
5 years ago

Off topic – Our fearless feminin,e feminist, Nancy Pelosi is at the helm and doesn’t mind Sharia Law.

Pro-Israel Crowd, Code Pink Clash Over Ilhan Omar Sharia Law Support
By Michele Moons
3/14/19

Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition members clashed with Code Pink activists in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s front office Thursday over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s support for Sharia Law.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero led a pro-Israel organized sit-in at Pelosi’s office Thursday, highlighting the Speaker’s failure to condemn antisemitism from Rep. Ilhan Omar and more broadly in the House of Representatives.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/14/pro-israel-crowd-code-pink-clash-over-ilhan-omar-sharia-law-support/

The future Nancy Pelosi?
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.468327.1314622359!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_750/alg-resize-burqa-jpg.jpg

Ziggy46
Ziggy46
5 years ago
Reply to  felix1999

The look of the future for not only the so-called feminists but sadly the real, realistic women who see through the deceitful veil of Islam and the Democratic Party of Islam. Pelosi, I swear, is one of Satan’s Legions out to annihilate all non-Muslims and Western culture.

Millionmileman
Millionmileman
5 years ago
Reply to  Ziggy46

Look at the money she will save on Botox!

Ziggy46
Ziggy46
5 years ago
Reply to  Millionmileman

I feel even Botox would fail but great point.

Millionmileman
Millionmileman
4 years ago
Reply to  Ziggy46

Which is why she chose the Burka

Ziggy46
Ziggy46
4 years ago
Reply to  Millionmileman

Indeed, wow, it is total madness.

AR154U☑ᵀʳᵘᵐᵖ DEPLORABLE 2020
AR154U☑ᵀʳᵘᵐᵖ DEPLORABLE 2020
5 years ago

LOVE FEST and HONEYMOON are over !!

comment image

felix1999
felix1999
5 years ago

OPEN BORDERS MASS IMMIGRATION, GUN BANNER , ZUCKERBERG –

Open Borders Advocate Mark Zuckerberg Erects Wall Around Exclusive Hawaiian Estate…
Posted on June 27, 2016 by sundance
Residents of Kauai are not too happy with Facebook CEO and open border advocate, Mark Zuckerberg after he begins erecting a massive border wall around his property.
..
“The feeling of it is really oppressive. It’s immense,” Hall said. “It’s really sad that somebody would come in, and buy a huge piece of land and the first thing they do is cut off this view that’s been available and appreciative by the community here for years.”

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/06/27/open-borders-advocate-mark-zuckerberg-erects-wall-around-exclusive-hawaiian-estate/

I guarantee you armed security, plenty of technology and camera will keep them safe beside the WALL around this NEW property to live on..comment image

antimulticulturalism
antimulticulturalism
5 years ago
Reply to  felix1999

YET he promotes open borders and open invasion of the globes terrorists,criminals upon us while he and his family are well secured.
Just like our politicians- especially here in canukistan where the best security is none too good for them while they bring death upon we the citizens!
TYPICAL LEFTY!

lee
lee
5 years ago

I deleted my Facebook account after I was censored for saying something negative about Arabs. So I can no longer comment on Times of Israel. Anyhow, screw Facebook.

Alleged-Comment
Alleged-Comment
5 years ago

Laurel & Hardy was running the show, eh? Bunch of amateurs.

Drew the Infidel
Drew the Infidel
5 years ago

In view of the NZ massacre, the left is quick to blame Trump and guns when the accelerant for such heinous acts is social media.

That shooter in NZ live streamed his rampage on “Fakebook”.

WittyWeasel
WittyWeasel
5 years ago

Oh, right ! Folks, let’s just come running like lemmings to Zuckerberg’s nice, new little ” Honey Trap ” . . . . group conversations ” like in a living room ” ? Let’s see . . . how will this work ? Get a bunch of people in on one compact conversation, say, thirty or forty, talking about one subject, say, terrorism or antisemitism, conservative or Constitutional rights, Republican values and American concerns like border control, anti-abortion and gun rights, etc. and let them blather away freely ( thinking all the while their conversations are safe & ” encrypted ” ) then plant a mole in the conversation, gathering names, e-mails, IP numbers, etc. who will continuously monitor the group and then . . . POW ! Zuckerberg can, in one fell swoop, turn all members of the conversation over to his generous money source, the FEDS. Very, very shrewd way of netting a large number of ” misfits ” at once rather than searching tediously through individual accounts. It’s easier to shoot animals in a corral rather than chase them individually across the countryside.

Welp, just NOPE ! This guy’s already proven he can’t be trusted and he’s just thinking up new ways of destroying Americans’ faith in social media. It’ll all come out in the wash . . . but by then it’ll be too late. Best of luck, America. I’ll be watching THIS train wreck from my lawn chair, under an umbrella, drinking a tall glass of sweet tea !!

John Acord
John Acord
5 years ago

Zuckerberg’s team is about to announce a new “crypto currency” one can use on Facebook, Instagram, and What’s up. They are going to compete with Amazon. Some analysts see 3 trillion in revenue being generated by this “upgrade” to Facebook. It may be a pipe dream, but on the other hand it could become reality within a few years.

JGray1
JGray1
5 years ago

I have been thrown off facebook oodles of times and it is always because I have reported something anti semitic. facebook likes Jew haters. it thrives on anti semitic crap which they never take down no matter how egregious and shockingly disgusting. so here we are. zzuckerberg is on his way out as well as his lietenants who see the handwriting. what is private messaging anyway. what do i need or want fb as a messenger i have email. anyway, the whole thing gives me the creeps. I suppose those imams who are always spewing violence and incitement to murder Jews will still be there I am sure. and the puppet followers of islamic jihad who do nothing more than kill everyone and then cry that we’re phobic about them. uh. yes.. quite phobic.

kktex12
kktex12
5 years ago

FB and suckenberg are in the hip pocket of cair and the pagan cult of islam.

Rivia
Rivia
5 years ago

Zuckerberg = NAZI

godot
godot
5 years ago

I’ve never had a Facebook account, and never felt the need for one. Unfortunately, social media has become an addiction for many people – they should try to break the habit.

WM1
WM1
5 years ago

They can’t implode fast enough, for my tastes.

Kwitcherbellyakin
Kwitcherbellyakin
5 years ago

Facebook announced that American Express head Ken Chenault would be joining them. American Express used to have a message that the customer comes first, and tried at all times to maintain customer satisfaction. A gentleman named Harvey Golub was the man who innovated this customer care, but he retired. Mr. Chenault was hand-picked to succeed him, and the first noticeable thing he did was pay Tiger Woods $25 Million to make him a spokesman. At the same time, consumer confidence in Amex fell. Just saying.

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