Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Facebook’s Top U.S. Salesman Leaves

Anyone want to run U.S. sales for the world’s biggest social network? There’s an opening.

Tom Arrix, Facebook’s longtime head of North American sales, is leaving the company. Arrix, who joined Facebook in 2006, announced his departure today. Facebook ad chief Carolyn Everson will take over Arrix’s role until she finds a replacement.

Here’s Facebook’s statement on Arrix’s departure: “Tom was an early and integral member of Facebook’s global sales efforts. He leaves a great legacy at Facebook and we wish nothing but the best for him in the future.”

And here’s a goodbye quote from Arrix, who hasn’t announced what he’s going to do next; there’s a longer farewell on his Facebook page. “This was the job of a lifetime. We helped marketers think about the power of people, we humanized the relationship between brands and potential customers, and through that connection they are driving real business results. For seven years I had the good fortune of working for one of the world’s great companies, one that is committed to truly changing the world. While I know it’s time for new challenges, I will miss my colleagues. They are amazing people and some of my best friends.”

Arrix, who had previously worked at Univision, CBS Sportsline and Turner before joining Facebook, got to witness and participate in a pretty extraordinary transformation.

Prior to his arrival, Mark Zuckerberg’s site had almost no advertising; last quarter, it brought in $1.25 billion from ads. We’ll see how the most recent quarter panned out in eight days, when Facebook reports its Q2 results.

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald