Nicholas Felton, who came to fame through many super-detailed infographics and reports about his life (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/an-annual-report-on-one-mans-life/) as quantified through data, is leaving Facebook almost two years after being acq-hired to work on projects like Timeline.
His early work, which compiled data on things like all the songs he had listened to or everywhere he had been in a single year into a "Feltron Annual Report," became the basis for Timeline. In a sense, all the profiles of Facebook's roughly 1 billion users are all like living, breathing annual "Feltron" reports.
He posted on his page today:
(https://www.facebook.com/nicholas.felton/posts/10151848462876982)
On April 19, 2011 I walked into the Palo Alto Facebook office and began contributing to the timeline project. Two years, many late nights and a few launch celebrations later I will be moving on.
The opportunity to help mold a service of such importance to so many people has been a high point in my professional career. I'm extremely proud of the projects I worked on, grateful to the teams that built them and confident in the products to come.
Facebook acq-hired Felton's startup Daytum in April of 2011 (http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/27/facebook-acq-hires-daytum/) and Felton and his co-founder Ryan Case moved from New York to Palo Alto.
When Facebook's vice president of product Chris Cox unveiled Timeline (http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/facebook-timeline-birth/), he said he was inspired by seeing Felton's annual reports: "14 pages. One year. One book. It was hard to call it anything other than what it really was — art."
He went on, "We had one reaction: we have to try to hire this guy."
There's no word on what Felton be working on next yet.
Via: TechCrunch