Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Departs

Facebook's high-profile chief technology officer Bret Taylor is leaving the Silicon Valley social networking giant later this summer, with future plans to work on an undetermined start-up.

The move is likely to be of concern to some over the newly public company's ability to hold on to entrepreneurial leadership, especially in the wake of continued intense media and investor scrutiny over its rocky IPO last month.

That's especially true since Taylor has been in charge of both platform and mobile efforts at Facebook, a critical arena for the company.

A pair of Facebook execs under Taylor, Mike Vernal and Cory Ondrejka, will be taking over platform and mobile, respectively.

Vernal joined Facebook in 2008 from Microsoft, leading the original Facebook Connect project and also working on platform efforts and the development of Open Graph. Ondrejka arrived at the company in 2010 through the acquisition of Walletin and has previously worked at Linden Labs on Second Life.