Around the Net

Key Facebook Exec Departs

Facebook has just seen its first major executive departure since the landmark deal with Microsoft valued the social network at $15 billion. Owen Van Natta, who was first Facebook COO and then Chief Revenue Officer and vice president of Operations, said in an interview that he had done all he could at Facebook and now wanted to become CEO of a consumer Web company.

Van Natta had played a significant role in negotiating Microsoft's $240 million investment in the company. He had been a Facebook executive since September 2005, and retains a sizable chunk of Facebook stock. "Facebook has a really great management team in place now to take it to a new level," he says.

Unfortunately, the CEO job at Facebook belongs to 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg. "We are now at a point where we have made some key hires and have strong businesses," Zuckerberg said. "What we are trying to be is a social utility, and we think we can connect the whole world."

Read the whole story at BoomTown/ D: All Things Digital »

Next story loading loading..