Departure of Facebook iPad Developer Highlights the Company’s Slow-Moving Mobile Strategy
The lead engineer behind Facebook’s yet-to-be-launched native iPad application left the company out of frustration with continual delays around the release of his work, according to a blog post he published today.
His move underscores the fact that Facebook has not had a major mobile-related launch since November of last year at a critical time when Apple and Google are moving full-steam ahead with the Android platform and the iPad. We’re expecting to see a big announcement out of Facebook on its mobile strategy in the next two to three weeks, however.
The developer Jeff Verkoeyen said that even though Facebook’s iPad app was largely ready to go in May, the company held off on launching it for several months because of undisclosed reasons (presumably Facebook’s complex relationship with Apple or indecision over how much to invest in native versus HTML5 in the short-term).
Verkoeyen is moving to Google where he’ll work on the mobile team, after being employed at Facebook for less than two years.
