Facebook Co-Founder Moskovitz to Leave
Published by Rodney Rumford October 3rd, 2008 in Facebook.
Facebook Co-Founder Moskovitz to Leave?
It would appear that one of the co-founders of facebook; Dustin Moskovitz is leaving facebook. It looks like he is leaving to start another company with Justin Rosenstein who is currently a Facebook engineer. Facebook has not officially confirmed this at this time; but we have seen a note that does in fact support this.
Dustin is the VP of Engineering at Facebook. He has put out some amazing products during his tenure at facebook including the iPhone app for Blackberry. Most people don’t know him because he has never really been front and center publicly. As facebook matures and evolves it is not surprising that some really smart people from the early days of facebook would move on to start their own ventures. He can certainly afford to do so. He does have a killer idea to be leaving facebook: to build an extensible enterprise productivity suite, along with a high-level open-source software development toolkit, built for the Web from the ground up.
In this August 2007 interview with Podtech.net he discusses the future of Facebook, their desire to remain an independent company, their strategy for building out their platform, expanding to other demographics, and how Facebook helps people to increase their “social capital.”
A note from Justin Rosenstien confirms that they are leaving facebook in about a month:
“So we’ve decided to leave Facebook (in about a month) and start a new company, to build an extensible enterprise productivity suite, along with a high-level open-source software development toolkit, built for the Web from the ground up.
We see this new venture as very complimentary to Facebook. We hope our products will become to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life. Our software will use Facebook Connect as the default option for identity and authentication. Our user interface will adopt many of Facebook’s conventions, creating a seamless and familiar experience for current Facebook users. And if our new development tools turn out to be useful, we hope the Facebook engineering team will come to adopt them.
Leaving Facebook makes me sad, but I feel I have to follow my passion on this. I can’t say enough about Facebook and the friends I’ve made here, and I am enormously excited for the company’s further success, a destiny I’m confident it will reach regardless of my participation in it.”
I wish them well in their new venture and suspect it will be quite interesting since it will be leveraging facebook connect. 
You are leaving behind a legacy. All the best in your future endeavors Moskovitz. Sounds like it’s a good move. Good luck (like you need it!)
Their new endeavor sounds exciting. They should give OpenGoo a look.
I wish them the best of lucks!
Hi,
It is interesting to know that you are about to move and starting your own company. Moskovitz wish you a best of luck in your future endeavors.
Nobody is irreplaceable, but i am curious what would i do if i am at this position. Since facebook is doing really good, whay should somebody leave it?