Well it seems like Facebook has hit a rough patch. Earlier, the social media got involved in the biggest data scandal with the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, and while Facebook’s revenue continued to grow, few top-end management executives have left the company. The recent in line is Oculus founder and CEO Brendan Iribe who announced to step down from Facebook, without saying why.
“So much has happened since the day we founded Oculus in July 2012. I never could have imagined how much we would accomplish and how far we would come. And now, after six incredible years, I am moving on,” said Iribe in a Facebook post.
Facebook bought the Oculus VR start-up in 2014 for $2 billion and has since then introduced VR headsets such as Oculus Rift and Go.
Although Iribe had the title of CEO, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired Hugo Barra, a former executive from Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, to lead Oculus in 2017 as Facebook’s vice president of virtual reality.
Iribe leaving Facebook follows the March 2017 departure of Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey. Two other Oculus co-founders, Nate Mitchell and Michael Antonov, are still with Facebook.
“I'm deeply proud and grateful for all that we've done together. We assembled one of the greatest research and engineering teams in history, delivered the first step of true virtual presence with Oculus Rift and Touch, and inspired an entirely new industry. We started a revolution that will change the world in ways we can't even envision,” said Iribe.
“I'd like to sincerely thank everyone that's been a part of this amazing journey, especially Mark for believing in this team and the future of VR and AR. As for me, this will be the first real break I've taken in over 20 years. It's time to recharge, reflect and be creative. I'm excited for the next chapter,” added Iribe.
Earlier this month, several other executives from Facebook acquired start-ups have also left the company.
Instagram’s former CEO Kevin Systrom for the first time publicly admitted that he quit owing to the differences with Facebook.
“No one leaves a job because everything is awesome. When you leave something sometimes it is because it is incompatible with what you want to do, and things have changed,” Systrom told in a conference in San Francisco.
“In this case, there are no hard feelings at all, I am excited to do something new. I think Instagram is in a good place,” added Systrom.
In September, Systrom and his fellow co-founder Mike Krieger announced to step down from the Facebook-owned photo sharing app that has over one billion users to explore “creativity again.”
In 2012, Systrom and Krieger sold Instagram to Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook for $1billion. Instragram, since then announced plenty of features and has transformed itself from a photo-sharing app to a social networking giant used by over one billion globally. In 2016, it added the ability to post ephemeral stories, a copy of Snapchat’s popular “stories” feature.
Soon after their departure, Facebook appointed its News Feed executive Adam Mosseri as the new head of Instagram. Last week, Mosseri announced his first major product change, saying Instagram would use artificial intelligence to curb online bullies and offensive pictures on the app.
