AllThingsD » Mike Schroepfer

Facebook Not Sleepless in Seattle

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:00:49 +0000

Now that the ribbon has been cut and the finger sandwiches have been devoured, Facebook’s new Seattle office is open for business.

The social network has officially joined other Silicon Valley companies that are finding it valuable to have satellite offices in the Northwest, the home to Amazon and Microsoft.

Other companies with offices in the area include eBay and Zynga. Google has two (one for either side of Lake Washington, I guess).

Facebook VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer, who addressed employees and government officials at the office, overlooking the Space Needle, said the company was unsure what it would find when it decided to enter the region two years ago.

“But in two years, there’s been a clear demonstration of the capabilities of the people in Seattle,” he said.

Apparently.

Ari Steinberg, who moved to Seattle in July 2010 to start the office, said it had grown from just him to 90 employees. The larger office, which they just moved into 10 days ago, has room to grow to 175 — making it by far the largest development center outside of Menlo Park. So far, the group has worked on projects such as the iPad and iPhone apps and voice calling.

After short welcome speeches from Senator Maria Cantwell and Rep. Jim McDermott, Steinberg was a little less formal, telling stories about how an employee once moved his desk into the bathroom, and when he moved it back he found a fake column — complete with an outlet — installed in his spot.

As a reminder of the last office, that column was moved into the new digs (see photo at left).

The office is located just north of downtown Seattle, basically in the same neighborhood as Amazon, which has slowly been taking over for the past year. As Schroepfer rightly pointed out, once Amazon completes three new office towers — at one million square feet apiece — Facebook may no longer have a view of the Space Needle.

But that’s another eight years off, so they have some time.

Here’s a short tour of the office on the 18th floor, including a shot of Cantwell signing the Facebook wall. Unlike the company’s headquarters, you won’t find professional graffiti, but there are two Starbucks (well, kind of).

[ See post to watch video ]

The Furious Five of Facebook? Meet Its New Product Princes and Their Domains.

Liz Gannes and Kara Swisher — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:38:42 +0000

Facebook confirmed our report that it has reorganized its technical teams around key product areas, naming Bret Taylor, Chris Cox, Greg Badros, Mike Schroepfer and Sam Lessin as leaders of product groups reporting to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

So who are these newly elevated execs and what are the details of their new roles?

Sources said the company is still figuring out what to officially do about shuffling the five mens’ titles. Currently, its public-facing management page remains unchanged and a press release is nowhere to be found.

Facebook seems to be trying to get the most out of every last second it has as a private company, not revealing important bits of information. That includes which person is assigned to which product area, and even what those product areas are.

If Facebook PR wants to get all cryptic about it, that won’t stop AllThingsD.com! (We’re like the War Operations Plan Response (W.O.P.R.) computer in “WarGames” — soon we’ll have all the launch code numbers and let loose the missiles.)

Before that, the first and most important thing to remember is that CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg remains the king of product power at Facebook. It all rolls up to him, seated at the dead center around which all these new spokes turn.

Of the new arrangement, what’s also key to keep in mind, as one source aptly describes it, is that this is a ”verticalization” of Facebook, which had largely been horizontal before, with top execs covering a wider range of areas.

Now, it is more siloed and — presumably — more nimble, with more powerful lords of product areas in charge.

That’s a lot like the management rejiggering Google has done recently under its aggressive new CEO and co-founder Larry Page, although Facebook’s slicing and dicing seems to be more a matter of addressing internal growth and making the organization more functional.

Here’s the rundown that we have pieced together so far:

Privacy and Identity — a critical area for Facebook, since it seems to have an ongoing issue with it (or lack thereof) — will go to Lessin.

Communications and Apps — the real guts of the product — will get the leadership of Cox.

Infrastructure — the nuts and bolts of keeping the global megopolis of Facebook humming — will be the purview of Schroepfer.

Mobile and Platform — the big forward-looking areas — will be run by Taylor.

And Monetization — which includes advertising products and will pay for this whole shebang — will come under the sway of Badros.

But, until all is revealed by the social networking giant, here are some details of the newly named product potentates of Facebook — all men, it should be noted — you might want to know about:

Bret Taylor: As was previously reported here, Taylor is currently leading Facebook’s “Buffy” phone project, which is its HTML5-oriented smartphone effort.

Taylor was named Facebook CTO in June 2010 and has historically had no direct reports. His projects at Facebook have included platform, search, News Feed and mobile.

Taylor is a consistent presence at Facebook’s big public events. Even though he presents about technical stuff, his delivery is considered by many observers inside and outside the company as much smoother than his often awkward boss, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Prior to Facebook, Taylor co-founded FriendFeed, a geeky social app aggregator bought by Facebook; the app’s influence is seen in many of Facebook’s social products today. Prior to that, while at Google he helped create Google Maps.

Taylor has a young family and is a really big Stanford football fan.

Chris Cox: Chris Cox is Facebook’s well-liked product head and the company’s only real home-grown management star. He joined Facebook in 2005, shortly after graduating from Stanford, and has worked on products such as News Feed early on in their gestation. At one point as a young staffer, he was promoted to be in charge of Facebook’s human resources and helped set a tone for the company’s culture.

Cox often appears at Facebook events to talk about the human impact of Facebook’s products, and the merits of “social design.”

The charismatic exec got married this year and has played in a reggae band.

Greg Badros: Outsiders have been less familiar with Greg Badros. Badros had been in charge of advertising engineering at Facebook for the past two years.

Prior to joining Facebook in June 2009, Badros worked at Google for six years, where he was particularly instrumental on its well-known AdSense and Gmail products.

“Star” is the word multiple of Badros’s acquaintances and former colleagues used to describe him.

Badros is technical, entrepreneurial, articulate and humble, said former Keval Desai, his Google colleague and current VC at Interwest Partners.

“He can speak to a crowd of engineers and sales people with equal ease,” he said. “He was a star at Google and instrumental in scaling the AdSense platform.”

Badros has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington and did his undergrad at Duke.

Mike Schroepfer: Along with Cox and Taylor, Schroepfer has been at the top of Facebook’s org for a while as VP of engineering.

Schroepfer, who’s known internally and externally as Schrep, was previously VP of engineering at Mozilla and, before that, at Sun Microsystems.

He’s recently done a bunch of traveling with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to encourage women in tech and to open Facebook’s New York engineering office.

The affable exec also has a young family and just bought a Nissan Leaf.

Sam Lessin: The most recent addition of the group to Facebook, Lessin joined last October when Facebook nominally acquired his start-up Drop.io. Along with other “acqhired” CEOs, he has been influential within Facebook as a product manager.

Lessin was the major driver of Facebook’s upcoming Timeline redesign, which makes users’ profiles into visual journals of their lives. Timeline has not rolled out as soon as Facebook said it would, but it’s a major ongoing project that it seems natural for Lessin to continue to lead.

While still at Drop.io, he started a side project called letter.ly for paid personal email newsletters. Before that, he worked at Bain & Company.

Lessin went to Harvard at the same time as Zuckerberg and seems to be tightly integrated into the inner Facebook social circle. He recently became engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Wall Street Journal tech reporter Jessica Vascellaro.

(Full disclosure: Dow Jones owns both The Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD.com. Dow Jones is owned by News Corp.)

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in Liz’s ethics statement.

Facebook Confirms Reorg, Names Five Product Heads

Liz Gannes — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:36:14 +0000

Facebook today confirmed our report from last night that it has shaken up its organization around major product areas.

Here’s the statement:

“We can confirm that in order to streamline the product development process, we have reorganized our technical teams into product groups that report into Mark. These groups will be lead by Bret Taylor, Chris Cox, Greg Badros, Mike Schroepfer and Sam Lessin.”

As I wrote last night:

Facebook has done a major corporate reorganization in an effort to be more nimble, sources said.

The new structure integrates design, product and engineering teams around key product areas such as privacy and communication.

We’ll have more details as we get them.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

(Image credit: Flickr user Scr47chy)

Facebook Turns Newsfeed Into a Social Magazine to Highlight Big Pictures and Top Stories

Liz Gannes — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:32:57 +0000

Little Google+ popped its head up this morning to launch a few features and open to the public. Not so fast, growled Facebook: This is our week! So even though Facebook is essentially holding the tech news cycle hostage through a two-pronged attack of leaks and announcements in the run-up to its f8 developer conference on Thursday, the company called us to talk about a bonus launch today.

Here’s what’s new: Facebook will today start rolling out a revamp of its newsfeed that will make it more like a social magazine, weighting big pictures and important stories.

Yes, yet again, Facebook is redesigning a core feature and taking away options users have come to expect. Instead of the “top news” and “most recent” toggle options, users will see a newsfeed with the most important items since they last visited Facebook. So if they incessantly check the site, they’ll see new stuff every time. If they go out of town for a week, they’ll see highlights from the time they were gone.

And lest people feel as though the pace of Facebook is slowing down, the site is also offering an alternate view, one that will constantly scroll down a sidebar at the side of the page. This “Ticker” — which some users have had in tests for a while now — shows a live feed of nearly every action a users’ friends are taking across the site, including likes, statuses and comments.

Meanwhile, the size of photos displayed in the newsfeed will double. Larger photos is probably the change users will notice the most, Facebook VP Engineering Mike Schroepfer said in an interview today.

Schroepfer said he disagreed with my assertion that Facebook seems to be overcomplicating and expanding its feature set. “The new news feed is, in our mind, a simplification,” he said.

“The thing I personally find exciting is realizing three quarters of a billion people use the product and that range of experience can be someone with 15 friends to someone with tens of thousands of subscribers who uses the site for four hours every day,” he added. “We are adding some features but trying to do our best to simplify what we can and make them optional.”

Maybe next year if Facebook has this much stuff to launch it should just schedule a two-day f8 conference!

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

BoomTown Talks Girl Geek at Facebook Hack Event

Kara Swisher — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:08:41 +0000

This Saturday, BoomTown gassed up the Mini and motored on down to Facebook’s newest building in Palo Alto, Calif., for a Developer Garage and Hackathon, which the social networking giant did in partnership with Girls in Tech.

The goal was to focus on women developers, although there were plenty of dudes in attendance, as per usual at any all-night nerd-off.

While there, event wrangler Randi Zuckerberg fobbed off to me a panel for lady geeks she was slated to moderate, which was a decidedly risky move on her part.

Here is the video of that panel, which included: Facebook Engineering Director Jocelyn Goldfein; Meebo co-founder Sandy Jen; Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America; and Catherine Herdlick, a game producer for Electronic Arts (ERTS).

Natch, I also did a video of my own at the Silicon Valley event that features interviews with Zuckerberg, Facebook Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer, GIT Managing Director Dhana Pawar and Goldfein, which is also below:

[ See post to watch video ]

A "Mean" Video: BoomTown Annoys a Cavalcade of Facebook Execs at f8!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:15:38 +0000

Here is a video BoomTown did yesterday at Facebook’s bustling f8 developers conference in San Francisco.

At a press conference at the Silicon Valley social networking event, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg–trying mightily not to answer a question I proffered about the competitive landscape–said I wrote “mean” posts.

Oh, Mark, man up or get a big dose of a sense of humor from your delightful sister, Randi.

In any case, I hope Zuckerberg enjoys these interviews about the innovations and partnerships announced yesterday that I did with many of his minions, including:

Biz dev guy and guerrilla hugger Bubba Murarka, latest Google (GOOG) refugee David Fischer, PR honcho Brandee Barker, deal dude Vaughan Smith, moneybags investor Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, engineering head Mike Schroepfer and product guru Chris Cox, on whom I might have developed a man crush for his good humor while I poked at him.

Which is not mean at all!

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

Walt and Kara's Cavalcade of Gadgets on ZDNet

Kara Swisher — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:06:30 +0000

Last week, Walt Mossberg and I hosted the seventh annual gadgetfest, called “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology,” at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Every year, we show off a range of innovative new tech toys to the crowd, helped by our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, and by guest “tech geek” celebs.

This year, they were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering.

Before the show, Walt and I displayed our wares for ZDNet, which posted videos, below

Here are the videos:

Walt

Kara

Freaky Geek Bear, Nooks, 3-D Cameras, Head Massages and a Facial for BoomTown: The Churchill Club GadgetFest Video!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:05:10 +0000

Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted our seventh annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” program for the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Every year, we show off a range of new tech toys to the crowd, helped by our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, and by guest “tech geek” celebs.

This year, they were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering.

They brought a range of old and new favorite and innovative gadgets, including a Squeezebox Wi-Fi music player, a bizarre plush bear with GPS and other such tech features, and a facial brush that Sandberg tested on BoomTown’s flawless skin.

Also on the bill: A tie that takes pictures, a camera that stalks smiley people, a 3-D camera and digital photo frame, an Android netbook, a Nook e-reader, a bizarre head massager and a “Harry Potter”-like remote-control wand.

Here’s a video I did at the event, including interviews with Sandberg, Schroepfer, Mossberg, Harper, the bear and my son, Louie, who manned the digital hand vacuum from Dyson:

[ See post to watch video ]

Don't Miss the Annual GadgetFest at Churchill Club Thursday, Featuring Facebook Celeb Geeks

Kara Swisher — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:32:16 +0000

This Thursday, my All Things Digital partner, Walt Mossberg, and I are hosting–for the seventh year running–the annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” program for the Churchill Club.

This year, our guest “tech geek” celebs–drawn from the gadget-mad players of Silicon Valley–are Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering (pictured here).

In fact, Sandberg was scheduled to be our guest last year but had a last-minute snafu, so Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams filled in for her.

Among others, past geek celebs have included Google (GOOG) co-founder Larry Page, Yahoo (YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.

Also along for the ride is our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, president of HarperVision Associates and co-founder of Gadgetoff, who brings new meaning to the term. (He also packs so much hardware and software that he is on the TSA’s list.)

The evening starts at 6 pm with a buffet dinner at the Crowne Plaza Cabaña Hotel in Palo Alto, Calif. That’s followed by the program, in which each of us shows off some of our favorite innovative or just plain weird gadgets, while the others opine on the selections.

You can sign up early online or get a pricier ticket at the door.

Here’s a rather longish video from last year, which is well worth watching for the animatronic Elvis alone:

[ See post to watch video ]

Mozilla's CEO John Lilly Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:01:39 +0000

I met John Lilly last October on a decidedly odd techie scavenger hunt in Hawaii–trapped in a van all day while searching for tikis and such, as if we were a geek Brady Bunch (yes, BoomTown works that hard for you)–and found him to be just the kind of quietly intelligent, thoughtful and self-effacing digital exec that Silicon Valley could use a lot more of in these often frivolous, look-at-me Web 2.0 days.

Soon after, in January, he was named CEO of Mozilla Corporation, after serving as its COO. Lilly took over from Mitchell Baker, who remains Mozilla’s chairman.

The open-source software nonprofit foundation, also a for-profit start-up, is most famous for its red dragon logo and, more importantly, its increasingly popular Firefox browser, whose share has steadily increased since it debuted in late 2004.

Here’s my video interview with him about what’s next:

[ See post to watch video ]

Firefox now has about an 18-percent share, which has climbed from 11 percent just two years ago–against Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer browser juggernaut with 74 percent and Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser with 6 percent.

Mozilla’s recent launch of Firefox 3 should help it grow further, even though IE 8 will soon emerge out of beta too.

But on its record-setting debut day in mid-June, there were 8.3 million downloads of Firefox 3 in 24 hours. Current overall downloads have just moved past 50 million.

That means more money in the bank, although mostly from Google (GOOG), which pays Mozilla royalties for Google ad clicks that come from Firefox searches (Google is the default search box on the browser).

All is not sunshine and daisies, of course.

Besides having to keep up the innovation, Mozilla also has to keep up its technical prowess–despite the fact that it is not likely to go public and shower employees with giant gobs of overhyped stock, given its unusual status as both a profit and nonprofit.

In addition, in case you haven’t noticed, the start-up game is still rocking and it remains awfully enticing to jump into the ever-crowded pool.

For example, Mozilla lost Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer last week to Facebook, where he will be the social-networking site’s director of engineering.

But Lilly took that departure calmly, wishing him well in a classy way on his own blog, just as he seems to do most things.