Chris Daniels, who has been in charge of a Facebook effort to expand internet access, will head of WhatsApp, succeeding Jan Koum, the WhatsApp co-founder who said last week he was leaving the company. A second WhatsApp co-founder, Brian Acton, left in September to start a foundation.
This is a part of a major senior management shake-up at the social media giant. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has assigned more responsibility to his chief product officer and launched a blockchain division. The role of Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer, has not been changed and neither have there been any major hire and fire decisions.
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Chris Cox, the chief product officer in charge of the flagship Facebook service, will now also oversee the widely used services Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, the company said. WhatsApp has been given a relatively free hand since 2014, when Facebook bought it for $22 billion, but in recent months its two co-founders have announced their resignations, opening the door to closer integration.
Two other executives, Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer and Vice President of Growth Javier Olivan, will oversee other consolidated divisions, one related to “new platforms and infrastructure” and another for centralized services such as the ads system.
David Marcus, the head of Messenger for the past four years, will move on to set up a group to explore how to use blockchain technology across Facebook. Stan Chudnovsky, who has been Messenger’s product chief, will succeed Marcus as head of the service, Facebook said. Messenger and WhatsApp each has more than 1 billion users, making them among the most widely used smartphone apps globally.
Kevin Weil, head of product at Instagram, is leaving that job to join Facebook’s blockchain division, and Adam Mosseri, head of the Facebook News Feed, will succeed Weil at Instagram, the company said