Valleywag
elliot schrage
Posts Tagged “
Sheryl Sandberg
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exits
Valley's 150 biggest companies all run by men
With Diane Greene ousted as the CEO of Silicon Valley software company VMware by a jealous man and replaced by testosterone-laden former Microsoftie Paul Maritz, there's not a single woman running any of the Bay Area's largest 150 companies by revenues. We'd be less despondent about this if the up-and-coming women didn't have us so down. More »
jeff hammerbacher
Yet another hoodie-wearing Harvard kid drops out of Facebook
Following fellow early Facebook employees CTO Adam D'Angelo and VP Matt Cohler, Facebook's head of data and analytics Jeff Hammerbacher will leave the company. Cohler left for a prestigious partnership at VC firm Benchmark Capital. D'Angelo left — or was encouraged to leave — in order to find a project more suited to his interests. VentureBeat, which broke the Hammerbacher news, doesn't know why he's going. One thing all the departures have in common: They've come after COO Sheryl Sandberg's arrival. "Scaling up is hard and it's not as much fun not to know everyone you work with," she told employees when she joined the company. We're wondering if it won't be harder for Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg than he might think — what will he do without all his friends? More »
nerdfight
Google exec slags Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg
Why would Google confess to the many problems it has had selling ads? The problems, Google ad-sales exec Tim Armstrong admitted to the Wall Street Journal, extended far beyond YouTube, where Google's bureaucracy compounded advertisers' hesitation to place commercials next to the site's free-for-all video content. Armstrong didn't point fingers, but he didn't have to: Everyone in the Valley knows that Sheryl Sandberg, the high-ranking Google executive who recently defected to Facebook, oversaw Google's automated online-advertising systems. More »
browser wars
Microsoft's $240 million not enough to make Facebook Internet Explorer-compatible
Facebook's list of supported browsers does not include one that's proven relatively popular (if by hook or by crook) — Microsoft Internet Explorer. As blogger Dan Lewis points out, Microsoft may have invested $240 million in the social network startup, and you'd think that would win them some favors:More »
geeks gone wild
Only millennials get Random Play on Facebook
If you were over 30 years old when you signed up for Facebook, you never got the option to look for "Random Play" — that's what the "kids" are calling it now. Sheryl Sandberg's new No Fun regime at Facebook has taken it a step further: They've removed the Random Play option from some people, including me, who'd already checked it. Now all users' inner sluts have been caged, at least as far as the interface is concerned. More »
12:20 PM on Thu Jun 26 2008
By Melissa Gira Grant
3,447 views,
12 comments
Latest by random_play: This is an outrage! How will anyone now know the subtle hipster douchebaggery of random_play? Am I to devolve into a short-lived VH1 comedy series starring Stephen Colbert? To say nothing of the cupcakes! + Watch video more »
facebook
Facebook plans to move out of downtown Palo Alto
Facebook employees losing the $600 monthly rent subsidy aren't the only ones moving out of Palo Alto. With plans to grow by more than 1,000 employees this year, Facebook is planning to move from its cluster of rented offices sources tell BoomTown. Relocation options include the old Hewlett-Packard buildings west of Palo Alto as well as office parks in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. At least one young man at the company isn't happy about it, though. More »
exits
Matt Cohler, another member of Mark Zuckerberg's braintrust, leaves Facebook
Facebook's vice president of product management, is reportedly leaving the company to join Benchmark Capital. Two possible interpretations leap to mind: Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO recently hired away from Google, is pushing out, one by one, the executives closest to Zuckerberg, leaving him increasingly isolated. Or Zuckerberg, loathe to give up control over Facebook as a product, is doing it himself. Update: Cohler is joining the VC firm as a general partner, not an entrepreneur-in-residence, as we'd first reported — a considerably more prestigious role, where he'll be investing money in startups himself, rather than waiting to get funded. He'll stay tied to Facebook a "special advisor" to Zuckerberg — which suggests that any falling-out was not with the Facebook CEO. Cohler, for his part, tells Swisher he got along well with Sandberg, and helped recruit her to the firm.
facebook platform
Facebook's new profile: "Orwellian"
Welcome to the Silicon Valley hype cycle: One year, and you're over. That seems to be the consensus on Facebook's vaunted platform, whose one-year anniversary went largely unremarked. The company itself didn't blog about it until today, and sources tell us an open-bar party Facebook held in Palo Alto was low-key to the point of despair. It can't have helped that Google was throwing a massive party in San Francisco the same day to close out its conference for developers. How different a scene from a year ago, when the F8 launch event of Facebook Platform won comparisons of the company to Microsoft and of founder Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates. More »
5:00 PM on Mon Jun 2 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,927 views,
18 comments
Latest by Shadowlayer: FB was a fad, nuff said. @Michael_White_III: More like he stole the code... more »
google
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg not always remembered fondly by Googlers
Facebook employees blame new COO Sheryl Sandberg, hired away from Google, for the demise of their $600 per month housing subsidy as well as the cancellation of a scheduled drinking contest against CollegeHumor. One Google employee tells us the no-fun-on-my-watch attitude isn't the worst of it: More »
online advertising
Sheryl Sandberg defends Facebook's invisible ads
Facebook applications don't really do anything special yet. Neither, for that matter, do Facebook's ads. But that's OK, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg insisted yesterday at the D6 conference. Some of the applications, like Slide's SuperPoke, are really popular. Just like Elvis, she says.The comparison fails on two counts. More »
great moments in pr
Mark Zuckerberg: "A technology company is a company that creates technology"
CARLSBAD, CA — Mark Zuckerberg has learned nothing. Taking the stage at D6, he uttered nothing but bromides and nonsequiturs. Examples: "Facebook is a technology company ... a technology company is a company that creates technology"; "Religion, that's a big thing around the world". At his South By Southwest keynote, Zuckerberg benefitted from a crowd obsessed with the friendliness of Sarah Lacy's questions. With Kara Swisher, never a kind locutor, Zuckerberg had the spotlight shone on him, and he came off simply blank. Which is why he hired Sheryl Sandberg from Google, right? More »
rumormonger
Zuckerberg returns to California to find employees irked over axed $600 housing subsidy
Mark Zuckerberg must be glad he's at the D6 conference in Carlsbad, where he has nothing to fear besides running into my boss. We've heard one of the reasons Zuckerberg left town in the first place was that he didn't want to be around when the company eased out CTO Adam D'Angelo, a high school friend of Zuckerberg's. Another the sensitive CEO skipped town? He may not have wanted to see the disappointment when his employees learned that the company would revoke a cherished $600 housing subsidy for those living near Facebook's downtown Palo Alto headquarters. Since reporting the news yesterday, more tipsters tell us the subsidy slash is real. According to one, new employees will get no housing subsidy and as soon as current employees sign new leases with their landlords or decide to move, they lose theirs too. "Something is going on at Facebook and it isn't good," observed commenter sggrf afer yesterday's news. More »
d6 live coverage
Invading D6, the Wall Street Journal's posh pooh-bah conference
CARLSBAD, CA — D, the Wall Street Journal schmoozefest which opened today with a round of golf at the Four Seasons Aviara Resort, is not the conference for the rest of us. It attracts a host of tech and media CEOs who agree to be harangued onstage by Walt Mossberg, the sexagenarian of sexy gadgets, and Kara Swisher, the diminutive media commentaterrorist of AllThingsD.com. In exchange, they get to seem classy and witty, if only by comparison. It is the sort of elite event to which Valleywag is not invited. We showed up anyway. More »
rumormonger
Facebook employees to lose their $600 per month housing subsidy
Google may have its free food and massage parlors, but Facebook pays its employees a $600 per month housing subsidy as long as they live near the company's headquarters in Palo Alto. At least, for now it does. "Yeah, they're talking about getting rid of the subsidy," a disgruntled Facebook employee told a local gossip who passed word onto us. Our source blames new Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — the ex-Googler picture on the right, who when hired "came and kicked everybody in the ass and said this is going to be hard," according to Facebook HR chief Christopher Cox. More »
caption contest
MILFBook!
Most of Facebook's adult supervision gave the Facebook Prom a skip, we hear. But not recently hired Google execs Elliot Schrage, now Facebook's top flack, and Sheryl Sandberg, the formidable new COO who's revising Facebook's internal social graph day by day. We heard Schrage and Sandberg were tight at Google, but close enough for this "me-and-my-bitches" pose captured at the Facebook Prom event held two weeks ago? (Camille Hart, Sandberg's assistant, is on the left; she also followed Sandberg to Facebook.) Suggest a caption in the comments, and the best will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: abmw, for "They never have enough restrooms in these Apple Stores."
facebook
The real reason for Mark Zuckerberg's trip around the world: He's bad at goodbyes
We've never gotten a straight story on why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took off for a trip around the world. Work or pleasure? Our latest tipster says that Zuck's travels are really about about avoiding the unpleasantries of business — specifically, easing out some of Facebook's old guard, like CTO Adam D'Angelo. Here's what he passes on:More recently, a very high up manager in Facebook contacted me saying that Mark is a senstive soul about some matters, and did not want to be around when his friends were being "let go"/"leaving to pursue other passions."More »
cubicle culture
Facebook vs. CollegeHumor beer pong canceled
The smack-talk inspiring contest of beer pong — known as beiruit in some quarters — scheduled between Facebook and IAC subsidiary CollegeHumor is off. Why? Because Facebook's PR and legal departments said so, CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen told our tipster:Facebook's PR and Legal dept said they can't participate. I guess that's what its like working in corporate America as opposed to a fun Internet company.It's official: IAC's Barry Diller is the Web world's Fun Dad, while Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, brought in from Google to make Mark Zuckerberg's teen paradise more corporate, is Downer Mom. Cheer up, though, little Facebookers: Mother Sandberg did let you stay out late at the prom. Update: CollegeHumor is sad because they won't get to play with the smack-talk inscribed balls they designed specifically for this contest — pictured below. More »
