At the beginning of every year, Facebook (FB 1.29%) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces a personal goal. One year it was to wear a tie every day. Another goal was to read more books. There was also the time he killed a chicken in order to eat it. His Zuckness' goal for 2018 is on an entirely different scale altogether: fix Facebook.
As the company has been grappling with many problems and scandals, it seems like a massive reorganization at the highest echelons of Facebook could be part of the solution.
Image source: Facebook.
Recode reports that Facebook is implementing a massive restructuring of its management team -- the most significant in its history -- shuffling around nearly all of its highest-profile execs into new roles. COO Sheryl Sandberg's role appears to be one of the few positions that is unchanged.
Zuckerberg is establishing three overarching divisions for the entire company: family of apps, central product services, and new platforms and infrastructure.
Family of apps
The family of apps division will be led by Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, who will be in charge of the company's growing portfolio of apps, including the important WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram services, as well as the primary Facebook app. Instagram management does not appear to be changing, with CEO Kevin Systrom still in charge of the popular and growing photo/video-sharing service that is on the cusp of potentially becoming an e-commerce platform.
CPO Chris Cox. Image source: Facebook.
WhatsApp just lost CEO Jan Koum over a disagreement with the parent company's data practices, but VP of Facebook's internet.org, Chris Daniels, is reportedly becoming the new WhatsApp CEO. Messenger chief David Marcus is transitioning to a new role (more on Marcus later), with Messenger product chief Stan Chudnovsky taking over Messenger. Will Cathcart will be in charge of Facebook's core app. With everyone reporting directly to Cox, the goal is to streamline communication and collaboration between these core services.
Central product services
This department will handle many of the core back-end functions that tie all of the consumer-facing services together, such as advertising, analytics, engineering, and security. Central product services will be led by Javier Olivan, Facebook's VP of growth, who has been instrumental in Facebook scaling to where it is today.
Facebook's growth strategies will mostly be handled here as well.
New platforms and infrastructure
CTO Mike Schroepfer will be in charge of new platforms and infrastructure, which will explore long-term road maps around things like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and a newly established team dedicated to blockchain technology.
CTO Mike Schroepfer. Image source: Facebook.
Marcus will be in charge of the blockchain team. Longstanding exec Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, who made some negative headlines recently, will continue to oversee VR, AR, and hardware, after taking charge of those efforts last August. This includes Oculus and Building 8, Facebook's experimental hardware lab. Facebook's Workplace offering, which hopes to challenge Slack and make inroads with the enterprise, will also be included in this division.
Problem solved?
Facebook has a lot of problems to deal with right now. In a recent interview with Wired, Zuck estimated that it would probably take about three years to overcome these challenges. Hopefully, the new hierarchy will allow Facebook to better tackle these complex problems, many of which are of its own making. It does seem to better align Facebook's most talented execs in a way that will bolster collaboration across the company.
Now it's time for them to fix Facebook.
