• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 5, 2008

Adding an experienced hand, Facebook has named Google executive Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer.

Sandberg, currently vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, played a key role in building the search giant's main advertising programs-AdWords and AdSense-during her six-year tenure.

She will start at Facebook on Mar. 24, overseeing departments including sales, marketing, business development and human resources and report directly to co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"Sheryl is a great manager who will help scale Facebook's operation globally," said Zuckerberg in a statement. "She has relevant experience and a track record of scaling business operations and building new kinds of advertising networks."

Owen Van Natta, Facebook's first chief operating officer and then chief revenue officer and vice president of operations, left the company last month. Van Natta was instrumental in negotiating Microsoft's $240 million investment in Facebook, which valued the hot social network at a staggering $15 billion.

Among her other responsibilities, Sandberg will be in charge of privacy policy for Facebook. The company suffered a privacy debacle last fall after launching its Beacon advertising program which tells friends about members' purchases and activities on other sites. After a fierce privacy backlash, Facebook changed the program to be explicitly opt-in.

Sandberg's strong management background will be counted on to help guide the fast-growing company's efforts to develop an advertising business to match its stratospheric valuation. Under the 23-year-old Zuckerberg, Facebook has climbed steadily to 66 million members, but has yet to fully monetize its huge audience.

Community sites, including social networks like Facebook and MySpace, however, are one of the two fastest growing online ad categories along with entertainment sites, according to a recent report by Avenue A/Razorfish.

Facebook's revenues have been reported as $150 million in 2007, projected internally to rise to $300 million to $350 million this year.

Besides her role in helping to develop AdWords and AdSense, Sandberg was also heavily involved in launching Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm. Prior to joining the company, she was chief of staff to the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Clinton. She earned her MBA and undergraduate degrees at Harvard.