In addition to David Marcus, the team will also be comprised of some Instagram executives: Vice President of Engineering, James Everingham, and Vice President of Product, Kevin Weil, who also worked with the Twitter team in 2016
What is Blockchain technology and how should Facebook apply? These are questions that, from now on, will begin to be raised by David Marcus, the Facebook executive who, until this week, will be in charge of managing the company's independent messaging application, Messenger, to take on a new role in the company.
Marcus is leaving Messenger to take over a new internal team dedicated to exploring the Blockchain technology. Initially, it is estimated that the team will be small and comprised of less than twelve people, but will incorporate some of Instagram's top executives: Vice President of Engineering, James Everingham, and Vice President of Product, Kevin Weil.
As for the internal reorganization of Facebook, the current position of Marcus will be taken by the Messenger Product Manager, Stan Chudnovsky, who will take over the Messenger application and the team, as confirmed by Marcus in a post on his Facebook page .
It has been an honor to lead the incredible team of Messenger, their commitment to make Messenger the best it can be is unsurpassed. I will miss them, but I know that Messenger is in good hands with Stan Chudnovsky and will continue to create incredible experiences for all the people who depend on him all over the world. "
The change is worth mentioning for several reasons. First of all, Marcus' career is remarkable. As a former president of PayPal, he has had the opportunity to gather experience in the payment industry. And as part of the Facebook team, he has been in charge of Messenger through some of the most significant changes in the application over the past few years.
In fact, Facebook's decision to separate Messenger from the central application so that users had to download the standalone application to receive messages on the mobile, occurred during the first month of Marcus's work. In addition, he supervised the impulse of Messenger in bots of customer service, purchases and, more recently, in advertising. His departure from that work is striking, especially now that Messenger has begun to expand its advertising business.
In his ad, Marcus remembered his work in Messenger and anticipated some of the updates that are coming to the application:
When I joined Messenger, less than 300 million people used it every month, since then more than one billion people have joined. We have created many new experiences, from videoconferences to P2P payments, a camera and new features such as games. We opened the platform and now more than 200,000 developers are creating experiences and each month more than 8,000 million messages are sent between people and companies. Looking to the future, I am excited about the upcoming Messenger redesign and have shared an early look at this year's F8. I think you will love it! "
Facebook's recent decision to develop blockchain technology will surely add more strength to the encryption industry.
This development does not mean that Facebook will launch its own cryptocurrency, since there are many ways in which Blockchain technology can be applied, which have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, including the storage or registration of encrypted data. However, it is important to note that Marcus has shown interest in cryptocurrencies. In December, he joined the board of the exchange Coinbase.
These changes could be the biggest restructuring of the company throughout its history. In his new role, Marcus will report to Facebook CTO, Mike Schroepfer; and Chudnovsky will inform Facebook Product Manager, Chris Cox. Both new charges are part of a much larger Facebook reorganization that was announced internally this week.