Facebook Sure Does Have Trouble Keeping Execs

Facebook will soon have its third chief financial officer in less than two years, the company announced today via a leak to the Wall Street Journal. Gideon Yu, the man who came back from Dubai empty handed, is out. The hunt for his successor is starting now.

Facebook says this is about getting a CFO with public company experience (“We have retained Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience.”). Which is complete nonsense (and poorly thought out nonsense at that), because Yu, after a short stint at YouTube and an even shorter stint at Sequoia Capital, was the treasurer and SVP Finance at Yahoo. Which is very much a public company.

So why is he leaving? We have to speculate for now, but perhaps he’s not convinced the company can get another round of financing at the valuation the board wants to see. Or it could be any of a thousand other things. But it most certainly isn’t because he doesn’t have public company experience.

Less than two years ago Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of Yu “I consider it kind of a coup that we were able to recruit him here…He’s just excellent.”

I wonder why he didn’t add “I just hope for his sake that Facebook isn’t too successful, because if we IPO at some point, he’s out.”

Yu is just the most recent Facebook exec to leave the company. Here’s a list of at more than ten that have left since 2007 (not included on the list is Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, who is expected to leave this year to run for Attorney General in California):

Gideon Yu, VP and CFO – left 3/31/09
Net Jacobsson, director of business development –left, March ‘09
Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer – left in Feb ‘08
Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CTO left in May ‘08
Matt Cohler, VP of product development and #5 employee – left in June ‘08
Katie Geminder, Director of Product, left sometime after Jun ‘07
Jeff Hammerbacher – left in July ‘08
Ben Ling, head of developer platform – left in Aug ‘08
Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook cofounder– left in Oct ‘08
Rudy Gadre, VP and General Counsel, January 2006 – April 2008
Mike Sheridan, CFO, left in June 2007

Google Adsense Says Goodbye To Video Units Feature

Google AdSense is eliminating its video units feature, which allows publishers to show YouTube content and video ads on their pages. Google says that by the end of April, the feature will be fully eliminated for existing AdSense clients and that new clients of the revenue sharing ad program will no longer be given the option to place video ads on their pages through the program. Publishers can still display video content on their pages by pulling embed codes directly from YouTube.

Unsurprisingly, Google says it eliminated the video ads because of poor performance. It is difficult to figure out a sustainable ad model for video, which is why pre-rolls remain more common. But the problem with video ads may not be the ad unit itself but but the underlying content. Brand advertisers don’t want their names associated with random words spoken in videos. You simply cannot efficiently and consistently target ads based on three words in a video. For instance, if someone is watching a clip of “Snakes on a Plane,” it’s probably not the best place to put a travel ad. And search marketers can find better places to put contextual ads.

It seems this latest announcement is part of a growing trend of Google axing programs in AdSense. Google recently pulled the plug on its Google Radio Ads and was looking to sell off its Google Radio Automation software business. That news came less than a month after Google decided to bail on selling print ads. We hate to say we told you so but we saw the writing on the wall about adding video ads to AdSense awhile ago.

There’s more than one way to skin a Firefox

TechCrunch reported on the Mozilla Labs Personas work, allowing you to theme your Firefox web browser. I share Robin’s opinion that Mozilla should maybe, just maybe, focus on making Firefox a kick ass web browser, and leave the doodads and geegaws for other folks. Enter Brand Thunder, a company in Columbus, OH looking to “offer companies a compelling, patent-pending solution for creating a more persistent presence with their internet consumer.”

Change your browser’s look and feel without restarting! Install any of the Booms below, when you have more than one – click the B/T button in the toolbar, choose “Pick a Boom” and you’re there. Booms run on the Firefox browser. If you’re not already using Firefox, you can get it for free right here.

We started Brand Thunder to work with some of the world’s leading brands to bring you REALLY cool themes and extensions. Based on your response, we are onto something. We employ an incredible team of designers, developers and marketers to work with the brands to bring these bundles to you for free!

I’m not the target audience for this kind of thing, but I know a lot of people who want to show their school pride all over their computer desktop, and would be only too happy to keep that going into the browser. The same holds true for folks’ favorite bands, favorite emo poets, and favorite Martha Stewart color ensemble.

Hey Mozilla, why not leave the decorating to these folks, and focus on what you do best?