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Facebook's Platforms Face Another Exec Departure

Another day, another top executive is leaving Facebook’s family of platforms.

This time, it’s Neeraj Arora, Chief Business Officer at WhatsApp, who announced his plans to depart on Monday.

“I’m going to be taking some time off to recharge and spend time with family,” Arora writes in a new post.

A key player at WhatsApp, Arora was the fourth employee to join the messaging service seven years ago -- well before Facebook bought the company for nearly $20 billion, in 2014.

The loss adds to a growing perception that Facebook is no longer an enviable employer. Over the past year, this has been made worse by a number of public and private spats with disgruntled current and former employees.

Earlier this year, for instance, tensions between Facebook and WhatsApp’s founders were on full display when Brian Acton encouraged the world to delete their Facebook accounts. “It is time,” Acton tweeted.

More recently, Acton told Forbes that he regretted ever selling his startup to Facebook because the company places too high a value on monetizing its membership.

Last month, Brendan Iribe, cofounder and former CEO of Oculus, announced his resignation four years after Facebook spent $2 billion to acquire the virtual-reality firm.

Officially, Iribe had only nice things to say about Facebook management, but sources told TechCrunch he was frustrated with Facebook's decision to cancel the next generation “Rift 2” PC-powered virtual reality headset. Iribe had been spearheading the project.

This fall, meanwhile, upon the news that Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were leaving the company, sources told The New York Times that internal disagreements contributed to their decision.

Likely adding to everyone’s frustrations, Facebook’s network of platforms isn't growing fast enough to offset the declining popularity of its flagship property.  

As a result, Facebook’s related properties -- including Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook’s flagship app -- fell by 7%, year-over-year, according to recent analysis of Nielsen data by Pivotal Research.

In aggregate, core Facebook properties -- including Messenger -- fell by 13%, while time spent per user fell by a whopping 20%, year-over-year.

The declines continued despite the increasing popularity of Instagram -- which saw usage increase by 41% -- and WhatsApp, which saw usage increase by 38%, year-over-year.

1 comment about "Facebook's Platforms Face Another Exec Departure".
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  1. Henry Blaufox from Dragon360, November 28, 2018 at 10:21 a.m.

    Any of these founders who thought FB wouldn't squeeze revenue from the users must have been smoking something illegal. These guys aren't dumb. They got bought for stock, which made them wealthy at the time of acquisition. The stock appreciated many times over since, but now is off the highs. So it's time to cash in, take the money and run. As for the pieties in the departure announcements, stop it.

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