Facebook is dead-serious about boosting its messaging products. It is so serious, in fact, that Facebook has hired a key technology executive to turn around its Messenger application and eventually help the company earn money from messaging.
PayPal President David Marcus is leaving PayPal to become Facebook's next vice president for messaging products starting June 27. Facebook said Marcus, who was president of eBay's PayPal division for nearly two years, will report directly to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and Javier Olivan, vice president of growth and analytics at the social network. He will be in charge of creating a business model for Messenger, but his mandate will not cover WhatsApp, which will operate independently once Facebook has completed its $19 billion purchase of the messaging startup.
"David is a widely respected leader in the technology industry with a track record of building great products and finding creative ways to turn them into great businesses," says Facebook in a blog post. "David taught himself to write code at the age of 8, and he launched his first startup at the age of 23."
Marcus joined PayPal as vice president of mobile in 2011, when eBay acquired his startup Zong, a company that focused on mobile payments for social networks and games, before going on to become head of eBay's online payments division. In 2013, Marcus led PayPal in processing up to $180 billion in worldwide transactions, which earned almost half or 41% of eBay's entire revenue.
Marcus explained his decision to leave PayPal for Facebook in a Facebook post, where he said he was confident that PayPal will continue to be successful because the "product pipeline is strong" and "talent is flowing into the company again." Marcus also said that he was looking forward to going back to doing what he truly wanted to do: "building products that hopefully matter to a lot of people."
"Mark shared a compelling vision about Mobile Messaging," he says." At first, I didn't know whether another big company gig was a good thing for me, but Mark's enthusiasm, and the unparalleled reach and consumer engagement of the Facebook platform ultimately won me over."
More than 12 billion messages are sent on Facebook every day and Messenger, Facebook's standalone messaging app which split from the main Facebook app earlier this year, already has 200 million active users.
Facebook is also looking to release a new app that it hopes will take a shot at popular disappearing messages app Snapchat. Earlier today, Facebook seems to have accidentally published a new app on the Apple App Store that allowed users to send photos and videos that vanished into thin air once the receiver swipes through the message. Facebook quickly pulled the app, dubbed Slingshot from the App Store, but not before TechCrunch was able to take screenshots of the new app.
The announcement of Marcus' new appointment seems to sit well with investors, with shares rising .38 percent to $62.88 in after-hours trading this Monday. eBay shares fell by $0.12 to $49.58.
