Facebook Inc.'s (FB) Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor Friday announced plans to leave the social networking company later this summer to start up a new company.
In a corporate blog post, Taylor, who has been with the company for the past three years, said he is 'sad to be leaving', but excited to start a company with friend Kevin Gibbs, reportedly a software engineer with Google Inc. (GOOG).
Taylor has been in charge of both platform and mobile efforts at Facebook. These areas are considered to be critical for the firm as it tries to bring more revenues to help it keep going.
"While a transition like this is never easy, I'm extremely confident in the teams and leadership we have in place. I'm very proud of our recent accomplishments in our platform and mobile products, from Open Graph and App Center to Facebook Camera and our iOS integration," he said.
As per reports, Mike Vernal and Cory Ondreijka will take over platform and mobile, respectively. Vernal joined Facebook in 2008 from Microsoft, and Ondrejka joined in 2010 through the acquisition of Walletin.
Facebook, started by Mark Zuckerberg, had a rocky public debut last month. There were speculation of brain drain at that time as the IPO had made many of its employees millionaires.
Facebook shares closed Friday's trading at $30.01, up $1.72 or 6.09 percent. In the extended trading, shares lost $0.11 or 0.38 percent to $29.90.
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