Spaniard Javier Olivan, who has been named to switch Sheryl Sandberg because the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook’s mum or dad firm Meta, summed up the change in a submit, saying, “While I’ll have the same title, this will be a different role.” This isn’t nearly the truth that Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Olivan, each Facebook veterans, have been concerned with completely different facets of the corporate’s operations but in addition that they’re two completely different personalities. After founder Mark Zuckerberg, Ms. Sandberg has been essentially the most seen face of the social networking firm. In his submit, Mr. Zuckerberg referred to as her “a superstar who defined the COO role in her own unique way”.
Her successor doesn’t anticipate his position to have “the same public-facing aspect”. As the COO, the low-profile Mr. Olivan will proceed to work with progress, integrity, infrastructure, and different groups. Mr. Olivan, 44, adopted up on an engineering diploma with an MBA from Stanford, and labored at Siemens Mobile as product supervisor earlier than becoming a member of Facebook. He has been the behind-the-scenes man engaged on scaling merchandise and initiatives ever since.
In an interview with Venture Beat 12 years in the past, Mr. Olivan, then simply three years into his job at Facebook (when MySpace was nonetheless the larger platform), spoke about how the social media platform hopes to the touch a billion customers, doubling from its depend at the moment. As head of worldwide progress, Mr. Olivan’s mandate then was to faucet rising markets akin to India, Indonesia, and Russia, amongst others. In different phrases, the goal then was a market heavy on function telephones and low on bandwidth.
Growth problem
In 2010, Facebook wasn’t the social media chief that it’s at this time — it was trailing Mixi and Twitter in Japan, but to meet up with Orkut in India and Brazil, and was far behind Vkontakte in Russia. Cut to now: as per the 2022 first quarter outcomes of Meta, TextEditor3.64 billion customers are utilizing not less than one among its merchandise (Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram) each month.
By the time Facebook crossed the one-billion mark, it was confronted with one other progress problem. This time, the topic was the Messenger app, which advanced as a separate product in 2011 particularly after the corporate acquired a service referred to as Beluga. When the going bought gradual, it was Mr. Olivan who was tapped to hurry it up. He, as detailed by a report in Wired.com, found out that these utilizing the standalone app messaged greater than those that used Facebook’s messaging function.
Mr. Olivan was additionally a key a part of the organisation’s push for web.org, a free service promoted by Facebook and some companions in order to provide a style of the web to those that can’t afford it. It was criticised as Facebook grew to become the web gatekeeper for individuals who signed up for it. In a 2014 Time journal report, Mr. Olivan spoke about how Facebook labored with networking firms akin to Ericsson to recreate the situations in areas akin to rural India. “Then we brought in some phones, like very low-end Android, and we invited guys from the Valley here — the eBay guys, the Apple guys. It’s like, Hey, come and test your applications in these conditions! Nothing worked,” he was quoted as saying.
He has additionally been acknowledged because the one who pushed Mr. Zuckerberg to think about key acquisitions, together with that of WhatsApp. It has been reported that, at one level, the corporate was in a method alarmed by WhatsApp’s rising recognition, and that there was a sense that it might finally eclipse Facebook as a social networking choice. Also reported was the truth that among the firm’s leaders felt it could worsen if one among Facebook’s rivals manages to purchase WhatsApp. Mr. Zuckerberg did finally shut that deal at a whopping $19 billion.
Mr. Olivan’s appointment comes at a time when the corporate faces strain to maintain its day by day lively customers from falling. New challenges akin to privacy-related tweaks to Apple’s working system appear to be impacting Meta. New platforms additionally pose challenges. But then there’s additionally a long-term alternative that it needs to construct and scale. It goes by the title metaverse. As Mr. Zuckerberg stated in a latest analyst name, referring to metaverse, “I think it’s important to build the foundation for the next era of social technology as well”.
Source: www.thehindu.com
