14 DAY TRIAL // David Marcus, the well-known president of payments company PayPal, has decided to take his leave at the company he worked for the past two years. Now, he is heading over to Facebook, where he’ll take on the role of vice president of messaging products.
“Messaging is a core part of Facebook’s service and key to achieving our mission of making the world more open and connected. Every day around 12 billion messages are sent on Facebook, and in April we announced that Messenger, our standalone messaging app, is now used by more than 200 million people every month,” Facebook wrote in the announcement.
The company has mentioned that there’s a great potential to continue developing new messaging experiences that better serve the Facebook community which could also help reach more people. David Marcus will, from now on, handle these efforts.
Marcus taught himself how to code when he was 8 and launched his first startup when he was 23. In 2011, he joined PayPal as vice president, taking on the responsibility of handling the mobile payments business. In 2012, he became president and PayPal has managed to deliver new product experiences for customers and businesses.
In a message posted on LinkedIn, the new Facebook exec explained that after being with PayPal for three years and making huge progress, he realized that his role was becoming a management one. His passion for building products won over and so he decided to move on.
“After much deliberation, I decided now is the right time for me to move on to something that is closer to what I love to do every day. Now is the time, because I feel that PayPal has never been in a better position to capitalize on its unique place in the market,” he explained, adding that the leadership team was strong at PayPal and that the company was on track to achieve the “greatness it deserves.”
The exec also added that Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO and co-founder, managed to convince him to work for the social network with his vision of mobile messaging. Marcus said that at first he didn’t know whether another big company gig was the best thing for him, but Mark’s enthusiasms, as well as the unparalleled reach and consumer engagement of the Facebook platform ultimately won him over.
David Marcus will be stepping down from PayPal at the end of the month and his place will be temporarily taken by John Donahoe, eBay CEO, until a permanent replacement is found.
Facebook has been increasing its efforts to become more present in the mobile messaging area. A couple of months ago, the company announced that it was going to remove the chatting feature from the main Facebook app to redirect users to the dedicated chat tool.
Not too many hours ago, the company’s new app, Slingshot also made its way to the App Store by accident since Facebook didn’t intend to roll it out just yet. The tool offers users the possibility to send their friends photos and videos, but they need to “sling” something back before being able to actually see the content.
The company was interested in purchasing ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, but the offer was turned down.