The Huesca man, hitherto Vice President and Director of Product and Growth at Meta (parent company Facebook), becomes Mark Zuckerberg’s number two
Javier Oliván becomes Mark Zuckerberg’s number two. The Meta Platforms veteran (Facebook parent) will take over as the company’s Chief Operating Officer after playing a critical role for 15 years, albeit largely behind the scenes, in driving the social media company’s explosive growth . The Spaniard replaces Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation on Wednesday.
Olivan from Huesca (Sabiñánigo, 1977) holds degrees in electrical and industrial engineering from the University of Navarra and a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University.
Before joining Facebook in late 2007 as head of international growth, Olivan, 44, worked at Japanese companies NTT and Siemens. When it was founded, Facebook was a young company with about 40 million users and now it has nearly 3.6 billion users on Facebook and other apps like Instagram.
While overseeing his international moves, Olivan fueled Facebook’s expansion in countries such as India, Japan, Russia, Indonesia and Brazil, according to a 2010 interview with VentureBeat. Critics say the company has pursued this growth without adequate safeguards against the spread of disinformation, hate speech or harmful content in emerging markets.
Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen leaked internal documents last year showing that Facebook put profit over user safety and lacked sufficient control to remove malicious content in languages other than English.
Olivan, who loves paragliding and surfing, has previously served as Meta’s Vice President and Director of Product and Growth. In that role, he managed features and functions of Facebook and Instagram, as well as the messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger. In his new role, he will continue to lead infrastructure and business development. But his portfolio will also include advertising and corporate products, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
One thing probably won’t change. Olivan will stay out of the limelight as director of operations. This is in contrast to Sandberg, who appeared before Congress, wrote a bestseller about women in the workplace and often represented Facebook at events. “This role will be different from what Sheryl has done. It will be a more traditional COO role that Javi will focus on internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous,” said Zuckerberg.
Now that Meta is a mature company with $118 billion in revenue, Olivan may have less autonomy than Sandberg did when he came on board in the company’s early years, said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at advertising firm GroupM. A key question is whether Olivan will “be more attentive” to data privacy and brand protection issues so that his ads don’t appear alongside inappropriate content, Wieser said.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
