Facebook co-founder leaves to start his own software business

Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder and head engineer of the online social directory, Facebook, is leaving the company along with colleague and fellow engineer Justin Rosenstein to start his own software business, Palo Alto, Calif., company confirmed Friday.

"Dustin has always had Facebook's best interests at heart and will always be someone I turn to for advice," the social network's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement.

Dustin will leave Facebook in about a month to start his own Internet service. He will be joined by Facebook’s engineering manager Rosenstein, who joined Facebook from Google.

According to a note on Dustin's Facebook page, “Justin and I going to be around for at least another month and I am really looking forward to going deeper on this idea with everyone and how we can continue to work closely with Facebook. I’ll always be really proud of the work we’ve done and grateful for the opportunity to work with such a uniquely remarkable team. We’ll also be at the Q&A later to help continue the conversation right away.”

A Facebook note from Rosenstein states that he and Moskovitz would leave in a month to build an extensible enterprise productivity suite, as well as a high-level open-source software development toolkit, built for the Web from the ground up.

Rosenstein added that the new software would be compatible with Facebook, and that they hope to build software products which become as essential to users as Facebook is now. "Our user interface will adopt many of Facebook's conventions, creating a seamless and familiar experience for current Facebook users."

Zuckerberg and his Harvard buddy, Dustin Moskovitz founded the Internet’s second-largest social networking site Facebook in February 2004, which currently has more than 67 million active users worldwide. The site allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information.

As of March, 08, Facebook employs 500 people and has more than $100 million in annual revenue, while its rival Google has nearly 17,000 employees and more than $16 billion in annual revenue. Zuckerberg hopes the company would double its payroll to 1,000 employees by the end of this year.

Moskovitz’s departure comes six months after Facebook hired Google Inc.’s global sales head Sheryl Sandberg as its new chief operations officer, in a hope that his proficiency would significantly help the company gain expertise in online advertising sales.