Facebook promotes its VP of Product to Chief Product Officer

Facebook named its next Chief Product Officer this weekend as Chris Cox in a promotion from within the company. Cox, who formerly held the position of Vice President of Product, began working as an engineer for the company in 2005 and later worked as the company’s human resources director. He is also credited with helping invent Facebook’s news feed as well as the companies “Social by Design” strategy. Techcrunch reports that the promotion will not result in an organizational change within Facebook, but rather reaffirms Cox’s position as a leader within the company. 

Chris Cox helped invent News Feed and devised Facebook’s “Social By Design” strategy,  so now the company is recognizing his critical contributions by promoting the VP Of Product to Chief Product Officer. The new title won’t come with any organizational change, but cements the 31-year-old Cox as a leader of Facebook alongside COO Sheryl Sandberg. Mark Zuckerberg delivered the news to the company in an internal announcement this afternoon. Cox has been part of the special “M-team” that regularly meets with Zuckerberg to define the direction of Facebook. He stood right behind his CEO and close friend when Zuck rung the NASDAQ bell the day of Facebook’s IPO. Externally, Cox is widely remembered for his heartfelt on-stage demo of Timeline at Facebook’s f8 conference in 2011. You can watch a clip of that presentation here to get a feel for Cox’s emotive way of thinking about software. Just skip forward to 1:33:27.