Sheryl Sandberg announced in a Facebook post Wednesday that her 14-year tenure with Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has come to an end. In 2008, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recruited Sandberg, who had served at Google, to come in and build the advertising business, which targets ads based on the personal data the platform aggressively collects from a user pool that’s now swelled to nearly three billion. Sandberg’s power in the company only increased, and she continued to make strategic decisions collaboratively with Zuckerberg. “Sitting by Mark’s side for these 14 years has been the honor and privilege of a lifetime,” Sandberg wrote in the post. “Mark is a true visionary and a caring leader. He sometimes says that we grew up together, and we have. He was just 23 and I was already 38 when we met.” Sandberg’s post goes on to say that she’s “not entirely sure” what her future will hold, but that it will likely lean toward “focusing more on my foundation and philanthropic work.” She says her transition out has begun and that she’ll be all the way out this fall. “I still believe as strongly as ever in our mission, and I am honored that I will continue to serve on Meta’s board of directors,” she wrote. Sandberg’s legacy Sandberg’s legacy at the social networking giant is certainly subject to debate. Under her watch, Facebook reached nearly three billion users worldwide and became a Wall Street darling worth $525 billion, driven almost entirely by the ad business she built. Throughout the first half of her tenure at Facebook, Sandberg enjoyed plenty of goodwill within and without the tech industry, especially after the publication of her book, Lean In, which established her as a champion for women in the workplace. But with the Cambridge Analytica scandal (in which Facebook allowed the Trump-aligned voter-targeting group access to millions of users’ personal data) and the highjacking of Facebook by Trump-supporting Russian content farms in 2016, Sandberg’s image began to suffer, along with the tech industry’s as a whole. Not only did Sandberg bear some responsibility for those failures, but a 2018 New York Times piece—which featured the notable headline “Delay, Deny and Deflect”—highlighted Sandberg’s use of some unsavory PR tactics to escape responsibility. She came to be understood as a well-connected fixer who specialized in quieting any distraction from the smooth operation of her company’s highly lucrative ad business. Sandberg’s replacement Sandberg will be replaced by Javier Olivan, Meta’s chief growth officer, who also was a founding member of the company’s first growth team in the early 2000s. Facebook’s growth team, through the years, has become a power center within the company. The growth team instigated Facebook’s acquisition of Snaptu, an Israeli startup that, on its own, had created a stripped-down version of Facebook designed to run on basic “feature phones.” That technology, which required neither a cutting-edge smartphone nor a high-speed data network, eventually morphed into Facebook Lite, a minimalist version that is a vital component of the company’s growth strategy. By 2017, Mark Zuckerberg reported that it has 200 million users in such countries as Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Facebook was slow to adopt the smartphone revolution in the late 2000s, but it was the Facebook mobile app that carried the social network past the three billion-user mark. Sandberg’s departure comes not long after Facebook rebranded itself to Meta, ostensibly to align itself with a new crucial access technology—virtual and augmented reality glasses—which will give users access to the metaverse.
Autentifică-te pentru a adăuga comentarii
Alte posturi din acest grup
It really is mind-blowing how much incredible stuff we can do with images these days.
’Twasn’t long ago, after all, that advanced image adjustments required pricey desktop-computer software and s
Rasmus Hougaard is the founder and managing partner of Potential Project. In 2019 he was nominated by Thinkers50 as one of the eight most important leadership thinkers in the world. He writes for&
Almost 23 years ago, an employee at Apple described Steve Jobs to me as one of the world’s few “rock star CEOs.” At the time, I didn’t understand why anyone would talk about the head of a company
Millennials were told the 2008 recession was a “once in a generation” economic crisis. Almost two decades later, déjà vu has struck.
While the U.S. market rose following Pres
Meta is set to face off against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday in an antitrust trial that could force the social media giant to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.
The closely wa
When people talk about how AI might reshape media, the term
President Donald Trump’s administration has been predicting its barrage of tariffs targeting Chi
