Dear Elliot Schrage:

BoomTown wins.

As Sheryl knows from experience, don’t mess with the Swish. Or Texas. Or Zohan.

Just don’t mess.

For everyone else, here is the entire memo that Facebook sent out this week from CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to its 800-person staff about the departure of CFO Gideon Yu and the financial status of the Silicon Valley social-networking start-up, which some had been questioning.

According to the memo, there is a company Q&A tomorrow about it all too! What should I wear?

UPDATE:In a version of the memo I first posted, there was a repeated paragraph, with slight differences. This might have been a software error–several versions I got of this entire memo had different punctuation in various places.

In any case, I eliminated the extra repeated graph and I changed one part below of “we are” to “Facebook is” in brackets.

COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL–DO NOT FORWARD

Hey Everyone–

Today ends the first quarter of 2009, so I wanted to send out an update on our growth and financial progress, as well as a couple of changes we are making.

Our user growth has been extraordinary over the past year and has continued to be strong throughout Q1. We are getting very close to reaching our 200 millionth active user. This is pretty remarkable considering we just reached 100 million actives a little more than seven months ago. We have become the top site for sharing information on the web, and this gives us a good strategic position to help people share even more.

I am also pleased that our financial progress has been very strong as well. While we came into this year wondering how the recession might affect us, our financial performance in the first quarter surpassed our expectations. As other businesses around us are slowing down and cutting back, we continue to grow around the world. Our advertising products are becoming more attractive for advertisers and we have seen strong growth in both our domestic and international direct sales and online sales channels.

Even in the current economic environment, we are confident that this success will continue. Based on our first quarter results, we now believe we are on track to see our revenue grow by at least 70% this year. We just completed our fifth straight quarter of EBITDA profitability. And most importantly, we expect to achieve free cash flow profitability next year. That’s an important measure of financial success and sustainability because it means we’d be able to fund all of our operations and server purchases from the cash we generate while increasing our cash reserves in the bank. Hitting these numbers will require continued hard work, discipline and execution by everyone here at Facebook, but we are on the path to achieve these goals.

As we ramp up to take on these challenges, I want to let you know that Gideon Yu will be leaving the company. Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. I will always be grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish. As those of you who know him know, Gideon’s family is his highest priority and it’s certainly not the usual cliché to say that he plans to take some time off to be with his wife and son. Gideon and I have often discussed that the next stage of his career will likely be as an investor, and I fully support him in this regard.

We have retained Spencer Stuart to search for a new CFO and we will be looking for someone with public company experience who can help take us to the next stage in our growth.

In the interim, the finance team will report to Cipora Herman in her capacity as Treasurer and Ted Ullyot as mteam lead. In addition, [Facebook is] fortunate that Peter Currie, the former CFO for Netscape, has agreed to serve as the advisor to Facebook until a new CFO comes on board.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me or to others on mteam if you have any questions about our finance plans or organization. I’ll discuss this more at the Q&A on Friday and I will be happy to take questions then too.

Congratulations to everyone on a great start to the year and on all the momentum you have all helped build for the rest of 2009.

Mark

BoomTown is impatiently cooling heels, waiting for a press conference to begin about “new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service.”

The Yahoo (YHOO) reorg finally announced this morning is positively thrilling in comparison!

But we’re liveblogging it anyway!

Here’s what I got in the morning mail:

Hi Kara–

For more and future updates we encourage you to join the Facebook Group called the Official Group for Media & Analysts Following Facebook.

Also this:

Subject: Facebook Opens Governance of Service and Policy Process to Users

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

11:11 am:

Facebook PR honcho Elliot Schrage opens up the conference, but I am honestly only hear: “Blah, blah, blah.”

Then, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg comes on.

“Openness and transparency is not just an end state,” he said. “It’s also a process.”

Say what, Willis?

Soon Zuckerberg is explaining how he wants to craft Facebook’s rules of the road going forward. It’s like being at the Constitutional Convention, except for geeks.

Alert! Comment! Notify! Transparency! Oversharing!

11:17 am:

“We want to be as clear as possible that we do not own user data,” said Zuckerberg. “We feel really bad about that.”

Us too!

11:21 am:

I get to ask the first question, which is about how this whole mess happened.

Zuckerberg said Facebook had made previous changes all the time to its Terms of Service to complex legal documents. This time, in trying to make them simpler, “we made a few mistakes,” which in turn set off a firestorm.

Ah, the mistakes-were-made defense!

“A lot of the feedback was fair,” acknowledged Zuckerberg, who then talked about the new notification and feedback and comments options, so it will not happen ever again. Except next month.

Also, there will be a vote. Well, only on some issues that get people all hot and bothered, presumably. But who decides what gets voted on and who wins the vote?

Unclear. But vote early and often.

But, said Schrage: “We underestimated the sense of ownership” that Facebook users have for the service.

11:25 am:

A question about whether or not Facebook should have known better after its Beacon advertising debacle.

Not the same thing, said Zuckerberg. But point taken!

11:27 am:

More legal stuff. Zzzzzz.

Then a question on phishing scams. Off topic! Schrage cuts it off tout de suite. Sorry, fella, but this is about one screw-up at a time.

Another shouldn’t-you-have-known-better related question, referring back to the News Feed debacle of 2007. That was before the Beacon debacle of 2008. Which was before the ToS debacle of 2009. (Is anyone noticing a pattern here?)

In other words, Facebook should have known better.

Radical transparency, said Zuckerberg: “This is all about us trusting our users.”

He might start that ball rolling by not sneaking up on us all the time.

11:33 am:

More about rules of the road. More about the transparent community.

Zuckerberg is now fully channelling Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Call ends.

Boo!

Here’s one certainty in the hubbub that has resulted in the wake of the departure of high-profile exec Ben Ling from Facebook last week: COO Sheryl Sandberg is definitely not responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps.

That’s the joking question–”Was global warming Sandberg’s fault too?”–asked at a staff meeting at the social-networking start-up last Friday afternoon after the news of Ling’s departure on the heels of previous employee exits suddenly morphed into a series of increasingly vituperative posts on the Valleywag tech gossip site centering on what blogger Owen Thomas called Sandberg’s “reign of terror” at Facebook.

Using Photoshopped images–one of Sandberg wielding a rifle and another with the bright-red word, “LIAR,” plastered under her mug–the vaguely sexist and decidedly over-the-top picture painted was of Sandberg (at right) as some unholy cross of Lady Macbeth, the bad side of Hillary Clinton and a really grumpy fascist dictator of a small third-world country.

“She demands total loyalty, and brooks no dissent–even the healthy, boisterous debate that’s common to start-ups,” wrote Thomas dramatically, as if Sandberg might really use that fake rifle on errant minions. “You’re either with Sheryl, or you’re against Sheryl. And if you’re against Sheryl, you’re not long for Facebook.”

Owen, you have now officially scared the bejesus out of BoomTown with that added dash of Rosa Klebb!

(And, of course, this image conveniently leaves out the very pertinent fact that Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still firmly and much more militantly in charge at Facebook than ever before, but we will get to that later.)

In any case, Valleywag used all of this to postulate that Sandberg’s insane reaction to Ling’s leaving–complete with a sneaky-sounding stock bribe to buy his silence–was evidence of her mad grab for power over all of Facebook.

The talented and strong-willed Ling was portrayed in an odd way too, as some sort of whiny victim of circumstances he was unable to control.

Except–while BoomTown likes a good “Tom and Jerry” cartoon as much as the next person–it’s a deeply inaccurate portrayal of Sandberg, who arrived at Facebook in March; of what happened with regard to Ling; and most of all, of the often-painful growing-up process that has actually been occurring inside of Facebook.

The Ling incident is, in fact, a perfect example of this.

According to multiple sources from all sides, Ling (pictured here) was offered the choice of resigning or being terminated last Monday, and he and Facebook senior management wrangled over how he would leave the company and announce his return to Google (GOOG)–in a big job at its YouTube division, in fact. But the true story of his departure is highly typical of how small, promising Web companies stumble forward.

From mismanaging expectations related to Ling’s job after his arrival from Google last fall (after Facebook widely touted the new recruit), to constant shifts in how the company was organized, to a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings on both sides, the curious case of Benjamin Ling and Sheryl Sandberg is–more than anything–completely human.

Which is to say, it is a bit of a mess.

Here’s what I found out, after spending the weekend talking to as many people with knowledge of the situation as possible, in a very long report:

To begin, as someone who has been consistently tough on the company for its insane valuation, criticized its sometimes ham-handed management and pressed it to show the true path to sustainable monetization, I think I cannot be considered a cheerleader for Facebook or for its shifting management.

Thus, I and many others looked closely at the recent departures of CTO Adam D’Angelo (to take time off) in May and longtime exec Matt Cohler in June (to become a VC at Benchmark Capital) with a gimlet eye.

Looking further, I learned from several sources that the 20-something D’Angelo had issues with the company inevitably becoming larger and more bureaucratic, and there were also questions about his ability to run the much larger and increasingly complicated technical organization.

The sudden exit of Cohler (pictured here), who had become Facebook’s VP of Product Management, had an even a more complex set of variables, sources said, including his longtime interest in being a VC, the highly attractive offer he got from Benchmark and, most of all, his lack of interest in running a much larger organization.

While some say Cohler–who was, in fact, key to bringing Sandberg in–quickly grew disillusioned with her and the direction of Facebook, it seems a bit of a stretch to me to say he left because of her.

As Zuckerberg’s earliest and most trusted of execs, who is also well-liked by all, Cohler had as much–if not more–power as Sandberg over the organization. More likely, I imagine Cohler would have stayed if he thought she was laying waste to the place.

In any case, the arrival of Sandberg–followed quickly by the hiring of former Google PR head Elliot Schrage–heralded massive changes and an eventual path to an IPO for Facebook, a journey that not everyone welcomed, to be sure.

With their much more disciplined and controlling management styles, highly polished Harvard, Washington, D.C. and Google resumes, and obviously sharper edges, Sandberg and Schrage (pictured here) represented a contrast to earlier, less-intense times that not everyone at Facebook has liked.

Many execs–used to the chaos of jostling for attention and power from the close-to-the-vest Zuckerberg, whose attention to various employees seems to always wax and wane–also resisted a No. 2 in charge.

Typical was discontent from Technical Operations VP Jonathan Heiliger, whom many sources pointed to because of his vocal complaints around the company and around Silicon Valley about Sandberg’s more brusque and meddlesome style.

(Heiliger now gets along better with Sandberg, according to many, as do many execs previously wary of the new regime.)

Interestingly, Ling was not in this disgruntled camp, having known Sandberg from Google and hoped her arrival would clarify his growing disappointment with the job he thought he had been hired for.

According to many sources, Ling thought his job as director of platform product marketing, as described to him by Zuckerberg and others who recruited him in the fall of 2007, would be much more expansive than it turned out to be.

And, indeed, the letter from his new boss, Chamath Palihapitiya, heralding his arrival seemed to indicate that Ling would have a lot of responsibility:

Hi Guys,

Please join me in welcoming Ben to Facebook as our Director of Platform Product Marketing, working on my team. He joins us from Google where he was the General Manager of eCommerce, where he ran Google Product Search and Google Checkout and was the founder of Google Checkout. Ben also led the mobile efforts at Google in 2004, where he launched Google SMS. Prior to Google, Ben received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Ben is responsible for overseeing Platform aspects of Product Management, Product Marketing, Technical Support, and Partner Solutions.

Zuck, D’Angelo and I are psyched to have Ben on board. *BLING*, as he is known to his friends, sits on the 2nd floor of 156 if you want to come by and introduce yourself.

Chamath”

It was a wide swath of duties, which seemed to indicate that Ling was, in essence, the lead manager of the platform.

This turned out not to be the case, as Facebook runs more as a “functional” organization rather than a “cross-functional” one, which is to say, no one manager is in charge of all the many parts it takes to get a product out the door.

For someone like Ling, sources said, the lack of structure meant chaos and no clear lines of accountability, and he pressed his bosses for more definition of his role.

For their part, sources said, those execs–Palihapitiya (pictured here) and then Cohler–felt Ling was too interested in internal politics, his title and control rather than in taking the lead in a more organic way. They also felt Ling, while a good executor of tasks, lacked the vision to be the overall manager of the platform.

Whether they ever did anything about it, of course, remains unclear, except for the fact that this kind of thing happens a lot all over Silicon Valley.

Let me just stop here then, because one can go round and round with this kind of wrangling over job performance issues and never be able to determine who exactly is to blame.

But it is safe to say Ling was not happy with Facebook and Facebook was not happy with Ling.

When Schrage was put in charge of platform marketing (and not in charge of the platform itself, as many have misconstrued, since he is decidedly nontechnical), the controversial move caused more problems and threw Ling’s status into even more confusion.

Ling and many others did not like the move, of course, but Ling did go to Schrage to share his disappointment and then took his gripes to Sandberg.

That, from what I can tell, is where things went most awry.

In that meeting about 10 days ago, Ling told her that Google had been tring to recruit him and that he was unhappy with the structure of the Facebook organization. According to those who back Ling, he was not making a threat, but seeking advice.

That is not the way those at Facebook see it. “Ben wanted a bigger job, and he was using the prospect of going to Google as a hammer,” said one person. “But he was not doing a good enough job with what he had been running to make such demands.”

Sandberg said she would discuss it with other senior execs, most especially Zuckerberg, and get back to Ling with some answers on Monday.

That was when discontent with Ling bubbled up among his managers, and suddenly a series of smaller slights and problems with Ling added up, and not in his favor.

Curiously, although Facebook sources claim they were dissatisfied with Ling’s work, there seems to have been exactly zero effort to remove him before he revealed the Google offer.

Nonetheless, all now agreed that Ling should not have the larger job, especially if he was also considering a job at rival Google–although, once again, it is not clear that he actually asked for a larger role within Facebook.

What has been lost in this story, though, is that the final decision came from Zuckerberg (pictured here), who was irked by Ling’s demands and his perceived disloyalty.

Sandberg and Schrage came back to Ling on Monday of last week with a startling decision: He could either resign immediately and write an email to his staff announcing it or he would be terminated by them that night and they would announce it.

Ling was, many sources said, flabbergasted that what he thought was an attempt to get some clarity had turned into this. His detractors maintained he was threatening Facebook by dangling the Google offer.

Ling wrote his letter to staff, and news of his departure leaked by the next day, both to me and VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon.

In my post, Ling did not say he resigned under pressure, nor did Facebook say it was about to fire him if he did not resign.

“I have huge respect for Elliot and work well with him,” Ling told me. “Facebook is a tremendous organization, and I would not leave it if it were not for a great opportunity.”

Facebook’s statement said, in part: “Facebook confirms that Ben Ling will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other interests. We wish him well and appreciate his great contributions to the early success of Facebook Platform.”

No surprise, but things got worse when the discussions quickly turned to the terms of his departure. Ling was only a few months away from his “cliff” for vesting one-quarter of the equity he got for coming to Facebook.

Facebook offered to either accelerate that completely or even make an offer of some of those shares, but only if Ling stayed on the Facebook payroll–taking a two-month vacation–and did not accept an offer from Google or anyone else in that time period.

In addition, deeply sensitive to the perception of a high-profile Google hire going back to the mother ship, Facebook wanted the deal to include a provision barring an immediate announcement that Ling would return to the search giant.

Obviously, given that the original story had been all about talent leaving Google to come to Facebook, the opposite was a much less palatable plot.

Still, this kind of request to refrain from going right to work for a competitor in exchange for shares is not untypical, and companies almost always ask for strict nondisparagement clauses.

But in the hothouse blogging environment of today, of course, to ask for help stopping such news from leaking is like asking to hold back the ocean waves. External optics on Ling’s departure clearly became too much of a focus of Sandberg, Schrage and others.

More to the point, although he did consider delaying acceptance of the job at Google, even though there were other contenders for the position, Ling did not want to agree to Facebook’s messaging about his departure.

Said one Ling supporter: “How could he guarantee that someone was not going to find out and then he would have had to tell a lie about his plans? Especially, given that Facebook is the leakiest place in the Valley?”

Good point and thank goodness! Valleywag wrote about Ling lunching at Google and I wrote of the details of Ling’s new YouTube job on Friday.

Facebook sources, though, said Ling threatened to badmouth the company if they did not pony up. “He insinuated he was going to talk badly about all of us, and we did not want to deal with him acting like that,” said one source.

Sources supportive of Ling said this was not the case and that he was not ever going to impugn Facebook, although Ling was, of course, unhappy.

“Why they didn’t give him some credit for his work and align his interests with theirs by being more generous is a mystery to all of us,” said one Facebook exec, who noted that Ling was prominently featured onstage in the most recent rollout of platform changes at Facebook. “His fall from grace makes you think anyone could go from valued employee to bum pretty quickly.”

Other sources at Facebook disagree, noting Ling was simply a hire who did not pan out as expected and that the fault was in not dealing with the issue sooner.

They also note that the company would never have agreed to put Ling prominently onstage if they had known he was considering a move to Google.

But once again, if Facebook was unhappy with Ling’s work, why put him onstage at all?

It’s hard to get a good answer to that question, which–to me–underscores the disorganization around Ling’s leaving.

“Ben is a really smart guy and Google is probably a better place for him,” said one Facebook exec. “He will probably do well, but he did not do well here.”

Actually, neither Facebook nor Ling did very well in dealing with the disintegration of the relationship.

Ling got a new job at YouTube and a fat signing bonus, but no Facebook shares, some of which he probably deserved for his work on the platform.

And Facebook learned yet another hard lesson about growing up. It is doubtless going to be one of many, many to come.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Ben Ling–the high-profile Facebook platform exec who came from Google less than a year ago and then up and left the social-networking site earlier this week–is about to head back to Google, this time taking a job leading monetization efforts at YouTube, according to several sources.

On Tuesday, BoomTown reported that Ling (pictured here) was leaving his job at Facebook, where he has been director of platform product marketing.

At the time, Ling would not be specific as to his reasons for leaving, saying in an interview: “Facebook is a tremendous organization, and I would not leave it if it were not for a great opportunity.”

And that opportunity apparently entails returning to his previous employer, where Ling once worked on Google’s Checkout product and other e-commerce platform efforts.

Ling’s is a move that will surely spur many to rev up the Facebook-versus-Google (GOOG) stories, given that several top Google execs–such as COO Sheryl Sandberg and PR and Platform head Elliot Schrage, as well many others–have been recruited by Facebook over the last year.

Apparently, the Empire does strike back.

Interestingly, Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed the YouTube monetization issue in an appearance on CNBC’s “Mad Money with Jim Kramer” yesterday.

Here’s a transcript of the section where they discussed YouTube:

CRAMER: LET’S SPEAK ABOUT A QUESTION THAT, AGAIN, I’M TRYING ADDRESS THE QUESTIONS HOLDING THE STOCK DOWN. YOU HAVE TREMENDOUS DOWNLOADS IN YOUTUBE ARE EXTRAORDINARY.

SCHMIDT: BUT EVENTUALLY WE’D LIKE TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF IT, BUT IF WE DON’T, THE FACT THAT SO MANY PEOPLE COME TO YOUTUBE MEANS THEY ULTIMATELY GOOGLE AND DO GOOGLE SEARCHES AND CLICK ON ADS. SO DON’T BE TOO WORRIED ABOUT ALL THAT TRAFFIC GOING TO YOUTUBE. I’D BE WORRIED IF PEOPLE WEREN’T USING YOUTUBE. SINCE IT IS AN ENORMOUS SUCCESS GLOBALLY WE KNOW WE WILL BENEFIT.

Valleywag ran an item earlier today speculating that Ling might be on his way back to the mother ship, noting he was spotted having lunch there recently.

Earlier this afternoon, sources told BoomTown that Ben Ling (pictured here) was leaving his job at Facebook, a high-profile departure given that the social-networking company grabbed the well-known techie from Google (GOOG).

Ling and Facebook have since confirmed the departure to me.

At Facebook, Ling has been director of platform product marketing. He told his staff today of his plans to leave the company.

While some sources speculated that Ling was perhaps unhappy with the installation of uber-PR guru (and also ex-Googler) Elliot Schrage over Ling and others in the key platform arena recently, Ling was adamant that this was not the case.

Ling, in an interview today by phone, said: “I have huge respect for Elliot and work well with him.”

Ling would not be specific as to his reasons for leaving the hot social network, but he said he was pursuing “another opportunity.”

Mysterious!

He added that “Facebook is a tremendous organization, and I would not leave it if it were not for a great opportunity.”

Facebook has seen the departure of several key executives over the last few months, for a variety of reasons. Those who have gone include: VP of Product Management Matt Cohler, who is leaving soon to become a venture capitalist at Benchmark Capital, and former CTO Adam D’Angelo, who left in May to take time off.

Here is Facebook’s official statement on the Ling departure:

“Facebook confirms that Ben Ling will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other interests. We wish him well and appreciate his great contributions to the early success of Facebook Platform. Platform is poised for continued growth and success, and the company is on track to deliver the range of major initiatives announced last month at f8, including Facebook Connect, fbFund and the Great Apps and Application Verification programs. Each of these programs have a strong team of professionals focused on attracting the best developers to Facebook Platform, helping developers succeed on Platform, and helping users find and enjoy great applications on Facebook.”

The most excellent Eric Eldon of VentureBeat was also on the Ling-leaving trail and did a post that includes a lot of great reporting on Facebook’s platform too.

They lost.

In court, I mean, not in rowing!

But I am sad to say BoomTown is deeply uninterested in the long-running legal struggle between Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the hot social-networking site and the group affiliated with ConnectU–heretofore referred to by BoomTown as NotFacebook.

Namely the Winklevoss brothers, Cameron and Tyler (and also another guy, not a Winklevoss), who are world-class rowers.

Without going into the gory details, they settled a lawsuit in February that centered on how Facebook was founded and whether or not Zuckerberg stole code to create it while an undergrad at Harvard University.

And then the Winklevosses claimed that that settlement in the endless legal battle should be voided because of fraud and reopened.

The ConnectU side claimed that it had found some “smoking” gun instant messages that proved their case.

Whatever.

The federal judge in San Jose decided to let Facebook enforce the settlement anyway (but, because there are lawyers involved, there will probably be yet another bite at the apple).

In any case, BoomTown fully enjoyed the take-no-prisoners PR stylings of Facebook, now under uber-PR guru Elliot Schrage and, thus, we render the statement about the win here in its entirety:

We are happy that Judge Ware enforced the agreement settling our dispute with the ConnectU founders. ConnectU’s founders were represented by six lawyers and a professor at Wharton Business School when they signed the Settlement Agreement. The ConnectU founders understood the deal they made, and we are gratified that the Court rejected their false allegations of fraud. Their challenge was simply a case of ‘buyers remorse,’ as described by the Boston Court earlier this month.

We were disappointed that we had to litigate the settlement, as we believed we were caught in the middle of a fee dispute between ConnectU’s founders and its former counsel. Nevertheless, we can now consider this chapter closed and wish the Winklevoss brothers the best of luck in their future endeavors.”

As in, don’t let the door hit your Winklevii on your way out!

Oh the sweet irony of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting awarded a big round glass object, suitable for mantel-showing-off, from Harvard types.

Especially since he is now the school’s second most famous tech mogul dropout–after Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

But that was the case last night at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency, where the 24-year-old Zuckerberg collected the 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award from the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California.

As is required at dinners like this, Zuckerberg had to sing for his supper in a post-meal interview about the hot social-networking site’s past and future.

At first, he did clarify that he was technically “on leave” from Harvard, as Gates also is, which the crowd loved.

(But, memo to Harvard Yard: Neither Gates nor Zuckerberg is coming back, so don’t leave the lights on.)

Zuckerberg (pictured here with me) also used the term “share information” in the interview, perhaps even more than he did onstage when I interviewed him at the D: All Things Digital conference last month.

And so much so that it could be the basis for a raucous drinking game where you take a shot every time he says “share information,” which would make you dangerously inebriated within 56 seconds.

Zuckerberg also strongly reiterated his statement that Facebook was not for sale, which is especially important now that it looks like a tastier treat to Microsoft (MSFT), in the wake of its failed takeover of Yahoo (YHOO).

But Zuckerberg specifically nixed a sale to Microsoft, which invested $240 million in Facebook and gave it its infamous $15 billion valuation.

He was joined onstage by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg–who is an academically scary double whammy, holding a master’s degree in business administration with highest distinction from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Harvard University.

Plus Sandberg has a really effective hairy eyeball that she used to stop me from stalking her or Zuckerberg with my Flip camera.

Still, BoomTown managed to get some video of those attending the event, which was heavy with tech types.

My various quarry dispensed business advice, all while I mocked Harvard (lovingly, so don’t gripe that I am envious–am not).

So, here’s my video of last night’s event, which includes: Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba (HBS); Facebook’s Ben Ling (not Harvard) and Elliot Schrage (Harvard undergrad, masters, law!); Greylock Partners’ James Slavet (HBS) and David Sze (horrors–Yale!); Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer (HBS); and the glass award itself (totally HBS!).

And, once again, here’s Zuckerberg and Sandberg in action, somehow withstanding my withering questions at D6:

Part One

Part Two

While it is not yet clear exactly what kind of business case study Facebook will turn out to be in the end–a raging success or a raging something else entirely–that has not stopped Harvard from feting the hot and hyped social-networking site.

That would be the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, which will bestow upon Facebook its 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award on June 17 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.

Apparently, the glamour never stops for CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg, who will be at the event, leading the crowd “through Facebook’s remarkable journey.”

Well, that’s all BoomTown needed to hear, immediately ponying up the $225 for a seat for non-members (although we briefly contemplated the $10,000 “Centennial” table for six, which includes a private reception and preferred seating).

While neither Zuckerberg nor I have the fancy degrees–he dropped out of Harvard as an undergrad and I did not have a prayer of getting in in the first place–Facebook’s leadership is chock full of Harvard graduates.

(Much to the chagrin, I might add, of some of Facebook’s less collegiately endowed types, who sometimes grumble to me about the tony school’s influence there, much in the same way some at Google complain about MIT and Stanford.)

In any case, COO Sheryl Sandberg must have scored 800s on her SATs (BoomTown: a decent 720 in English and a less-impressive 640 in math, as near as I can remember)!

According to Facebook’s Web site, she “holds a master’s degree in business administration with highest distinction from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Harvard University.”

Meanwhile, new PR honcho Elliot Schrage “has been a contributor to the Harvard Business Review…holds a bachelors degree from Harvard College, a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.”

And let’s not leave out CFO Gideon Yu, who “holds a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School,” while VP of Product Management Matt Cohler’s “writings on the start-up economy have been published in Harvard Business Review.”

Here’s hoping some of this Harvard brain power rubs off on me over dinner!

And, using any excuse to post two video highlight reels from our recent sixth D: All Things Digital conference, here’s Zuckerberg and Sandberg in action, somehow withstanding my withering questions last week:

Part One

Part Two

Schrage confirmed his new job to BoomTown, right after he friended us on Facebook last night, using its new chat feature.

Way to go native quickly, Elliot!

The move to hire Schrage (pictured here) was announced to Facebook’s employees late this evening.

In a memo that BoomTown obtained (entire text below) to Facebook troops from India, where he is traveling, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said about the Schrage hire:

“This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”

Valleywag said Schrage had interviewed for the job at Facebook in a post earlier today about the possibility of Schrage working there.

At Facebook, Schrage will report to Sheryl Sandberg, another top-level Google exec who was hired as COO by Facebook, which is seeking to beef up its management ranks.

Other Googlers who have recently moved to Facebook include: Ben Ling, who is Facebook’s director of platform product marketing and Ethan Beard, who is its business development director.

Schrage is a big name to defect to Facebook from Google (GOOG), a trend that is probably becoming irksome to its top execs.

But Google’s deep bench of execs are enticing to many companies, even as the burgeoning size of Google makes it harder to hold onto more entrepreneurial employees. In addition, Google can no longer offer as lucrative a stock package to its staff as start-ups can, even though most of those smaller companies are not likely to pay off.

With a $15 billion valuation, Facebook is a safer bet, but still has to prove its worth and remains a risky move for execs like Schrage.

Still, according to sources, he contacted Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly and did not go through Sandberg. When she left Google, as is typical for departing execs, Sandberg agreed not to solicit Google employees.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Schrage had extensive public-policy experience before heading to Google two years ago, where he was in charge of the “company’s public-facing communications, including media relations, policy strategy and stakeholder outreach, as well as internal communications.”

He will have his work cut out for him at Facebook, which has already faced some PR snafus and vexing public policy issues, including controversy around privacy and advertising practices.

Sources said Schrage was interested in Facebook, because it was a company poised for explosive growth, much like Google in its early days. In addition, unlike Google, which has grown large, Schrage would have more of an ability to make an impact in arenas he favors like public policy.

Here is the text of Zuckerberg’s memo to Facebook employees about the hiring of Schrage (with start date and new email address missing), which was released tonight at 8:55 p.m. PDT:

Hey Everyone–

I’m writing from India to share with you the good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.

Elliot is joining us from Google where he has been their VP Global Communications and Public Affairs since 2005. At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and internal communications. Before that, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank, as a professor at Columbia Business School and as SVP at Gap. Early on, he began his career as a Harvard-trained lawyer.

This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.

Elliot will be starting on __, although you may see him around the office before then. If you want to send him a note to congratulate him on joining, his email is __ and I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

Mark

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.