June 1 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc. (FB.O) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, whose close collaboration with CEO Mark Zuckerberg boosted the growth of the largest social network of the world, leaves the company after 14 years, he told Reuters. a post on Facebook on Wednesday.
The announcement initially caused the shares of the social media company to fall by 4%, but the shares remained almost flat at the time of trading.
“When I got this job in 2008, I was hoping to be in that role for five years. Fourteen years later, it’s time to write the next chapter of my life,” he wrote.
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Growth director Javier Olivan will take over as chief operating officer, Zuckerberg said in a separate Facebook post, although he added that he had no plans to replace Sandberg’s role directly within the existing structure of the company. company.
“I think Meta has gotten to the point where it makes sense for our products and business groups to be more integrated, rather than having all the business and operational functions organized separately from our products,” he said.
Olivan has worked at Meta for over 14 years and has led teams that manage Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Sandberg’s departure marks the end of an era for Meta, which is shifting its focus to hardware products and “metavers” after years of scandals over privacy abuses and the spread of conspiratorial content in the its platforms, as well as the growth of users in its flagship application. Facebook.
The second at the helm of founder Zuckerberg, who was 23 when he hired her, Sandberg is one of the company’s most visible executives and the chief architect of its often-criticized ad-based business model.
Bringing in management experience and knowledge from the then nascent digital advertising industry, she transformed Facebook from a bustling startup into a revenue giant, while positioning herself as the face of feminism in American businesses.
At the time, Facebook was making $ 272 million in revenue, with a net loss of $ 56 million, according to regulatory documents. In 2011, a year before the company’s initial public offering, its revenue had skyrocketed to $ 3.7 billion with profits of $ 1 billion.
Meta ended 2021 with revenue of $ 118 billion and earnings of $ 39.4 billion.
Sandberg said in his post that he will continue to hold the board of directors of Meta after leaving the company in the fall.
When asked about her next steps, she told Reuters that she was focusing on philanthropy at a “critical time for women.”
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and current president of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), gives a sidewalk press conference during the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit at UN headquarters in the city of New York, New York, USA, September 23, 2019. REUTERS / Yana Paskova / Archives
“We’ve hired so many great leaders. I feel great about that. The next leadership team is on track to take the business forward,” he said, citing business director Marne Levine and global affairs president Nick Clegg.
DEFENSE DEFENSE
Sandberg has been a staunch supporter of Facebook throughout its many controversies, constantly arguing that executives were learning from their mistakes and perfecting the company’s tools to better control harmful content.
Last year, she told Reuters that she and Zuckerberg were responsible for fixing systems that had failed, while rejecting reports that the company was losing power.
“People love headlines about corporate drama, and I think it’s fair to say that they especially like headlines about women’s abandonment,” she said in the January 2021 interview.
Sandberg’s term covered both Facebook’s original agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2011 for privacy violations and a subsequent $ 5 billion deal for violations of the previous agreement.
She and Zuckerberg were among those then-commissioner Rohit Chopra said they should have faced further investigation into their role in the company’s behavior.
Under his leadership, the company was hit by revelations in 2018 that British consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly acquired data on millions of its US users to target election advertising.
That same year, UN human rights researchers said the use of Facebook had played a key role in spreading the hate speech that fueled violence against the Rohingya community in Myanmar.
He received further criticism when he told Reuters earlier last year that he believed the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were largely organized on other platforms, although the researchers had also identified a similar activity on Facebook.
Complainant Frances Haugen late last year accused the social media giant of repeatedly prioritizing profits to crack down on hate speech and misinformation, saying her lawyers had lodged at least eight complaints with the Commission. of the US Stock Exchange.
Prior to joining Facebook, Sandberg served as Google’s vice president of global online sales and operations and chief of staff to the U.S. Treasury Department under former President Bill Clinton.
A graduate of Harvard University, Sandberg is the author of several books, including the 2013 feminist manifesto “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.”
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Report by Katie Paul in Palo Alto; additional reports by Gina Chon and Diane Bartz in Washington, Sheila Dang in Dallas and Akash Sriram in Bangalore; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Alistair Bell and Bernard Orr
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