Long time Facebook employee Dave Morin (pictured left), an early member of the team that led the launch of Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect, is leaving the company today, we’ve confirmed. He’s starting a new company with Napster creator Shawn Fanning. Fanning sold his most recent startup, Rupture, to EA in early 2008.
What we don’t know is what that startup will do, and it isn’t likely Morin or Fanning will be saying anytime soon. In a phone call this morning, all Morin would say is that they’ll be building Facebook Connect into the product.
Morin was previously at Apple, where he met and partnered with Facebook. He eventually left Apple to join Facebook in 2006. At the time Facebook had just 10 million users. Today, it has over 350 million users.
Morin’s personal blog is at davemorin.tumblr.com. I’d expect him to announce this shortly.
A Facebook spokesperson tells us that Morin is leaving on good terms and that “we’re excited to be working with him on the other side as a member of the developer community.”
Update: Here’s Dave’s personal announcement.
Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1998 while attending Northeastern University. He is currently the GM of Rupture at Electronic Arts. Fanning has since founded SNOCAP, a B2B Music Distributor, in 2002, and Rupture, an MMORPG social network in 2006. Both companies were sold in 2008 – SNOCAP to imeem, and Rupture to Electronic Arts.
Dave is an entrepreneur. Today, he is the Co-Founder and CEO of Path. The simple and private way to share life with close friends and family. Previously, as an original member of the Facebook team, Dave played a variety of product, marketing, strategy, and management roles in expanding the Facebook ecosystem to over 800 million people worldwide. Most recently, Dave was a co-inventor of Facebook Connect which was created to make the Internet more social. Facebook Connect is now used by over...
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...
Path is the simple and private way to share life with close friends & family. Founded by Dave Morin, previously Co-Inventor of Platform and Connect at Facebook with Shawn Fanning, creator of Napster, and Dustin Mierau co-creator of Macster.
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