Facebook Prepares to Add More Friends in Washington

Sheryl Sandberg joined Facebook

Facebook has expanded the boundaries of their strategies in running the large ever growing company. Facebook has hired almost the top most and major ranked officials of the company with highly influential politically powered people from Washington. This hiring of people from both the parties to posts in the executive, legal, policy and communications department will directly help boost the company’s image in any future endeavors with Washingto. Firstly, Sheryl Sandberg, who was a Clinton administration official has been hired now as the chief operating officer at Facebook along with Ted Ullyot, a general counsel former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Most recent addition to the list is Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s former White House press secretary; Facebook is negotiating to hire him in its communications department.

According to the eyes of political and legal analysts, Facebook is in process of civilizing the idea of privacy and taking over the communications, media and advertising in the current Internet age. Facebook is definitely keeping in mind the unfortunate course of events faced by their rival companies Microsoft and Google with Washington. They perhaps have acknowledged that this minor political concern might later end up in major conflicts over its influence on the economic and social Web. Hence, it is playing safe and building a very stern defense in advance.

Facebook is not officially giving a statement over their negotiations with Mr. Gibbs, who is bearing in mind the thoughts of joining Silicon Valley, rather than Washington. Though however, Facebook has already implied that they completely understand the significance of having both the representation of Washington and in Washington.

According to the vice president of global public policy at Facebook, Marne Levine, she says that “We are looking for people who are passionate about Facebook, who understand and can anticipate policy issues, and who are good at explaining those issues.” She herself has previously worked in the Obama administration and just joined Facebook last year. Her prospective was pretty clear as she mentioned that these hires with political background are just to bring “diversity of perspectives to its policy team.”

 On the other hand, in contrast some of the privacy advocates at the company are criticizing the strategy and new hires at Facebook. They are complaining that adding these Washington connections might end up releasing the amount of reasonable criticisms needed for policy making at Facebook.

Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of privacy programs at the University of California explains that these politically influential executives will not only have the government officials in the loop while discussing substantive issues but also imply their idea of proving the idea that Facebook can be a powerful campaign tool. He mentioned very clearly that “One of the big points is to show lawmakers that Facebook is important to their own campaigns,” and then he added to his point that “Once that fact is established, Congress will not touch Facebook.”

As Facebook begins to add in new heirs from Washington, Democrats are apparently more dominant in this regard. Ms. Sandberg, a consummate networker has strong connections in the Democratic Party establishment since the time she was chief of staff to Lawrence H. Summers, while he was a Treasury secretary for President Clinton. Once in an interview last year, she admitted: “Certainly I’m very focused on what’s going on in D.C.”

Though, it will also be wrong to claim that Facebook has neglected Republicans. Mr. Ullyot was hired three years back, who was not only a White House lawyer and chief of staff for Alberto Gonzales, who was attorney general in the George W. Bush administration but also had the experience of working with working for Justice Scalia. Moreover, just last month Facebook has hired more people associated with Republican Party, mentionable Catherine Martin, has previously been President Bush’s deputy assistant and deputy communications director for policy and planning.

Having said all that, in comparison of Facebook with its rivals in spending money on hiring political affiliated people is still very small. Facebook only spent $350,000 during 2010, which when compared with the $5.1 million spent by Google is merely negligible.

Legal analysts are explaining that Facebook is cleverly learning from the mistakes of other companies made in the past, taking Microsoft as an example. While they also pointed out Facebook has taken these steps of involving politically efficient people earlier while compared to other rival companies. Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley lawyer proudly acknowledged, saying “You can see how the thinking of the technology companies has changed.”

Richard A. Epstein, is a law professor and senior fellow in New York University who has mentored many companies and helped them avoid regulations also claimed that “The stakes have gotten so large that companies are hiring two kinds of people: people who know something and people who know somebody.”

Facebook now has diverse political connections even beyond Washington as it hired Richard Allan, in 2009, who was a former Member of Parliament in Britain, as the director of public policy in Europe.

Andrew McLaughlin, who after leaving the post of director of global public policy at Google joined the White House as their deputy chief technology officer in 2008, said very confidently that “None of this is rocket science.” He then went on justifying and explaining the idea behind this concept: “You make a judgment as to how much of a threat you face in D.C., you decide how much money you are willing to spend, and then you hire people based on your strategic sense.”