Moskowitz to leave Facebook

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz has quit the company in order to begin a seperate venture with fellow Facebooker Justin Rosenstein.

According to CNet the departure has been confirmed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who describes Moskowitz as someone who "has always had Facebook's best interests at heart and [who] will always be someone I turn to for advice."

Moskowitz was one of the first employees of the social networking giant when it moved from a project by Harvard students into a real business, and is responsible for a lot of the behind-the-scenes engineering both for the main Facebook system and for several side projects like the Facebook for BlackBerry application released recently.

Silcon Valley tattlesheet ValleyWag has it that Moskowitz and Rosenstein are to use the skills they've developed while in Facebook's employee to create a business-oriented social network system for sale to companies the world over. Although Moskowitz claims that he will "forever bleed Facebook blue" and that his new company will be looking to see "how [it] can continue to work closely with Facebook" you can't help but wonder how pleased Zuckerberg will be at one of his employees taking technologies developed while at his company and turning a quick buck.

With Moskowitz and Rosenstein set to work out a month's notice, it will be a while before we see exactly what the pair has planned for their new start-up.

Do you believe that a business-oriented Facebook-a-like has a chance of being the next big thing, or does Moskowitz suffer from wrong-tool-for-the-job syndrome? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

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