Early Adopter: Facebook Snags a Journalist, But What Will Vadim Lavrusik Do?

Tech giants have always gobbled up journalists and media types, but most of those folks end up in the PR department.

But, as of Wednesday, Facebook has brought aboard a media-mind who won’t be fielding calls from AllThingsD.com reporters wondering about the Winklevii.

Vadim Lavrusik, former community manager at tech and social media Web site Mashable, has joined Facebook’s media partnerships team, where he will be “Journalist Program Manager.”

Lavrusik is a graduate of Columbia Univeristy’s journalism school and did a brief stint at the New York Times before heading to Mashable–a site probably most famous for massive numbers of social media followers.

Lavrusik’s move from social media-heavy news site to news guy at a social media giant isn’t that surprising, but what exactly is his job anyway?

I headed over to Lavrusik’s coming-out party–the social networking giant called it a journalism meetup–at Facebook’s Palo Alto HQ, to find out how true he plans to keep to his journalist roots, and what his hopes are for the future of journalists on the Facebook platform.

After some nervous looks from Facebook PR staffers, Lavrusik agreed to do a little video and be grilled on what Facebook means for journalism, and what his first order of business will be, once he unpacks his moving boxes at its New York offices.