Facebook’s move into education may be unexpected, but it seems to be sincere. The project has won fans at the top of the organization, including the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and its chief product officer, Chris Cox, who wrote the blog post todayannouncing the partnership. “This is personal for those of us working on the team here at Facebook,” Cox wrote. “Through our kids, our families, and the teachers in our lives, we’ve seen that there’s an opportunity to help apply our skills to the future of education, and we all wanted to find a way to help make an impact by doing what we do best — building software. With Summit, it’s starting to feel like we’ve found the perfect partnership.”
Still, there’s a nagging question of why Facebook would build what is essentially an internal nonprofit organization with seemingly little connection to its core mission. At one point, Facebook considered launching PLP as a stand-alone company working on its education efforts. But ultimately Zuckerberg decided he wanted the team to focus on building software, rather than mundane tasks like hunting for office space.
“THIS IS PERSONAL FOR US.”
Sego sees the connection between the core of Facebook and PLP this way. “We are aligned with the broader mission Facebook has to not just connect the world, but help make those connections improve people’s lives — and in many ways, grow the knowledge economy,” he says. Rest