Facebook Hires Former Google VP

Former Google VP of sales and operations, Sheryl Sanderberg, has become the new chief operating officer of Facebook, following the departure last month of Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer.

Sandberg will be responsible for sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, privacy and communications and will report to Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook.

Prior to joining Facebook, Sandberg spent six years at Google as VP of global online sales and operations where she built and managed the search engine’s online sales channels.

She worked as chief of staff to the US treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton before joining Google.

Zuckerberg said: “Sanderberg is a great manager who will help scale Facebook’s operations globally. She has relevant experience and a track record of scaling business operations and building new kinds of advertising networks. She understands Facebook’s goal of connecting everyone in the world and is passionate about building a business that will enable us to realise this mission.”

Sanderberg added: “Together, with Zuckerberg and the great team at Facebook, we’ll be able to scale this company into a global leader and enable Facebook users worldwide to communicate and share information better.”

In February, Van Natta announced he would be leaving the company after a short tenure (see Senior Facebook Exec To Leave).

This was in the same month as Nielsen Online revealed that Facebook had seen its UK monthly unique users figure fall by 5%, from 8.9 million visitors in December 2007, to 8.5 million in January 2008.

This represents the first fall for the site, which is still ranked number one and has an audience 712% higher than it was a year ago (see Facebook Sees First Drop In Unique Users).

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