Facebook’s New Product Reorganization

Facebook has brought about some fundamental changes to the organisational structure. Facebook recently named new leaders for some of its main divisions — including the core social network, WhatsApp and Messenger — in the biggest management reshuffling since the company’s founding. Mark Zuckerberg is still the king of the castle, but everything below him is taking a different shape. The announcement comes after a prolonged period of controversy surrounding user privacy issues at the company

The company has been reorganized into three main groups: “Family of Apps,” which encompasses Instagram, Facebook’s core app, Messenger and WhatsApp; “New Platforms and Infrastructure,” which cover AI, AR/VR, blockchain and engineering teams; and “Central Product Services,” which will handle ads, analytics and product management teams.

The biggest moves?

• Exec Chris Cox appears to be taking the biggest power move here as he will lead the new Family of Apps group.
• David Marcus will notably be stepping down from his role as head of Messenger to lead an exploratory blockchain group under CTO Mike Schroepfer with Instagram’s Kevin Weil.
• Chris Daniels of Facebook’s Internet.org will be taking over WhatsApp after CEO Jan Koum announced he was leaving last week.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company also unveiled a new initiative to explore the use of blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology that underpins digital currencies such as bitcoin. The team dedicated to blockchain will be run by David Marcus, who formerly headed the Messenger chat app.

Facebook’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, has been promoted to oversee all of the company’s apps. Will Cathcart will become head of Facebook’s core application, the company said. The former leader of news feed, Adam Mosseri, was named head of product at photo-sharing app Instagram, replacing Kevin Weil, who will join the blockchain team.

Chris Daniels, formerly in charge of the company’s Internet.org initiative to spread connectivity in developing countries, will take charge of WhatsApp after the departure of Jan Koum, that tool’s co-founder, who announced his exit last month. The management changes were reported earlier by technology news website Recode.

Facebook is making the leadership changes after a broad review of all its products and their privacy holes, sparked by the revelation in March of a data leak that exposed personal information on tens of millions of users. The social media giant has had a stable management structure for years. Companies often shuffle executives to work on different products to bring a fresher perspective and to help the teams more easily identify problem areas.

The company also added Jeff Zients, a former Obama administration official and current chief executive of Cranemere Group, to its board, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday.