Brandee Barker, who has been Facebooka4ぎa4г director of corporate communications for the past four years, revealed that Wednesday will be her last day at the company. AllThingsDigital broke the news, and Barker also announced her departure on Twitter.
If you don&'t write about Facebook for a living, I suspect you may not have heard of Barker, since Mark Zuckerberg and other executives tend to take the company spotlight. The big joke in the AllThingsDigital article is that this corporate communications exec has been a constant source of a4ぎAno commenta4ぎ捏, and a quick search of the VentureBeat archives shows that wea4ぎa4ёe only mentioned her six times, all in 2007.
Still, ita4ぎa4г a significant departure, since Barker led the companya4ぎa4г PR team through a number of crises, starting with one of Facebooka4ぎa4г first big controversies, the launch of its news feed. Despite constant user complaints and criticism, Facebook has continued its rapid growth, and its reputation appears relatively unscathed by the release of The Social Network, a largely unflattering film about the companya4ぎa4г founding. (I suppose that last point is debatable, but at least Zuckerberg doesn&'t appear to be worried about the movie anymore.)
Barker just returned from maternity leave and she said she will be forming her own communications firm for early-stage startups. Which startups One possibility is Asana, co-founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early employee Justin Rosenstein.
[image via Flickr/Brian Solis]
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Companies: Facebook
People: Brandee Barker
Companies: Facebook
People: Brandee Barker
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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