Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Facebook Photos Product Manager Sam Odio Leaving the Company

Sam Odio, the product manager for Facebook Photos who joined when Facebook bought his start-up, Divvyshot, just over a year ago, will leave the company at the end of this week.

A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed Odio’s departure but did not offer further comment. Odio has not replied to requests for comment.

Facebook bought Divvyshot, a group photo-sharing service built by a team of three and funded by Y Combinator, in April 2010, just a few months after it launched.

It was a textbook example of Facebook’s talent acquisition strategy. Many long-time employees have left Facebook over the years, including early and prominent ones, and a key strategy for replacing them was to bring in entrepreneurial types through so-called “acqhires.”

The company named a string of talented and ambitious start-up CEOs as product managers after it bought their companies, including Odio, former Hot Potato CEO Justin Shaffer, former Nextstop CEO Carl Sjogreen and former Drop.io CEO Sam Lessin. Plus, former FriendFeed CEO Bret Taylor is now Facebook CTO.

However, now Odio will be leaving. We don’t know what he plans to do next.

Coincidentally, TechCrunch today published screenshots that appear to depict unreleased Facebook mobile photo-sharing interfaces for Apple’s iOS platform. The screenshots are a bit of a jumble but seem to show group photo album creation and other improvements.

Facebook’s official statement on the matter was, “We’re constantly working on new features and enhancements to our products but have nothing new to announce at this time.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

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