In 2008, Facebook was only offered in English-and struggled to expand internationally. If the company is waiting to employ translators, it is at risk of giving competitors to appear, as they already have in Russia and Germany. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg tries to buy a German clone, Studivz, in all-stok transactions that will soon be worth billions of dollars; Studivz refused. It forced Javier Olivan, only months in his work that led the growth of International Facebook, to produce better ideas. Instead of paying the translator, he suggested that Facebook asked its users to do work for free. German volunteers translated the site in just two weeks, shortly after the Spanish Facebook users did the same thing. Translating Facebook into French only takes 24 hours. This site operates in 18 different languages in six months.
Translating Facebook is the beginning of the company’s meteoric increase. That was also the beginning of Olivan. During the 15 years of career in Meta, Olivan, 45, has become the company’s most effective problem soller, operating almost exclusively behind the scenes as one of the most trusted trusted people in Zuckerberg. Now he replaced the second commander of Meta, Sheryl Sandberg, as the Chief Operating Officer.
In terms of star power, Olivan may be opposite to Sandberg. He rarely talks publicly or posting to Facebook or Instagram. But he has a share in all the battle and acquisition of Facebook’s main competitive. If the public has heard its name altogether, it might be from the internal email obtained by the congress in a report on the alleged status of the Meta monopoly, or from the leak document shared by Whistleblower Frances Haugen which describes the mentality of “growing at all costs” of the company.
That’s because, while Zuckerberg found Facebook, Olivan who helped expand the services-with all his social benefits and the size and strength that had never happened before. He became the company’s unofficial fixer, taking over when Zuckerberg really wanted something. He separated the Facebook Messenger application, which now has more than 1 billion users. He is also a major advocate for some Facebook offers, such as WhatsApp acquisitions worth $ 22 billion, as well as unknown onavo tools-who help Meta gather intelligence competitive about how often users open other social applications, such as Snapchat, on their cellphones. After the 2016 elections exposed a number of Facebook weaknesses about election advertisements and wrong information, Zuckerberg began moving the teams that worked on the problems to Olivan, including meta advertising efforts and efforts to fight spam and fake posts.
It was an easy, recalled and rose decision, led the old partnership of the company that left Facebook in 2018. “It has something to do with the fact that he is the most competent product executive we have in solving hard and complex problems,” he said. Olivan Zuckerberg’s choice to be COO suggests something bigger need to be improved: Meta business. Maybe the first time in a decade, the company felt vulnerable. Facebook growth has begun to the highlands, and Zuckerberg dramatically changed many products to fight the increasing competition from Tiktok. After posting a decrease in the first quarterly income in July, the company cut fees and said it would slow down the recruitment. Meta is also staggered from changes in privacy on the iPhone which makes it more difficult for companies to collect the right types of targeting data that encourage their advertising business for years. At the beginning of the year, Meta said he would see a reduction in a profit of $ 10 billion due to changes.
On top of that, Zuckerberg played the entire company towards his futuristic vision for the internet known as the Digital Metaverse world, in depth where people will communicate as digital avatars. This product is mostly hypothetical, with a business model that does not yet exist. Zuckerberg, who is more likely to borrow successful product ideas than to create it, must be true this time: Facebook’s assessment has been cut into two over the past six months, and concerns have emerged about the long-term feasibility of core social networks. This is a collection of problems that now fall to Olivan’s shoulder. The team under its supervision includes advertising, partnership, marketing, growth, company development, infrastructure, integrity, and analytic. Marne Levine, Head of Business Officers who used to report to Sandberg, report to Olivan right now.
Part of the intrigue about the new role of Olivan came from who he changed. Sandberg has been the second commander of Meta for the past 14 years, changing the company’s COO role into one of the most prominent positions in business. Over the years, he was a public figure for Facebook like his boss, talked about policy and business issues, meeting politicians, and promoting the global movement for the progress of women at work. As a trust in his statement that was eroded by every Facebook scandal, Sandberg resigned from the public view but still became the best -selling writer and the name of the household.
Olivan is still relatively unknown, even within the company. He prefers like that and is not interested in the press or media attention, said colleagues. He refused to comment on this story. The public Facebook profile has only 14 pictures, and only four of them include his face. Instagram is personal. “I do not want people to mistake your humility and lack of ego due to lack of effectiveness or because of shame or something,” said Alex Schultz, Head of Meta’s marketing, which was reported to Olivan for years. “He is truly a very low and humble man, in my opinion, and I think it must be valued in business a little more than that.”
Purview Olivan will be a little different from Sandberg. The policy team that once rolled out to Sandberg is now under Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who received his own big promotion in February and is now reported to Zuckerberg. Legal, also the old team under Sandberg’s supervision, now also reports directly to Zuckerberg.
But Olivan will have more responsibilities than Sandberg in other ways. He will oversee advertising products and advertising, for example, which means people who build meta advertising products will interact more with people who hear feedback from marketers. This is a subtle but important change for meta; Over the past most decades, Zuckerberg handled products, while Sandberg handled business. Zuckerberg acknowledged changes in his position which announced Olivan’s new role. “It makes sense for our products and business groups to be more integrated” than in the past, he wrote. Olivan will “build his track record in making our execution more efficient and tight.”
Olivan, who grew up hiking and playing ski in a small town near Pyrenees in North Spain, spoke five languages, including Japan and Germany, and served as family translators on a trip throughout Europe even as a boy. He studied electrical engineering and industry in Spain before getting a job at the Siemens technology company, and then the title of MBA at Stanford. When he arrived on Facebook, he had a better feeling about how people outside the US online and use social networks than others. Over the years Olivan had accompanied Zuckerberg on the way to Panama, South Korea and Spain, and was the key to opening many Facebook international offices.
