Three more top Facebook execs leave

It was bound to happen. Three more top Facebook executives have left the massive social network.

The latest employees to exit the company in the wake of its less than spectacular IPO include director of platform partnerships Ethan Beard, platform marketing director Katie Mitic, and platform marketing manager Jonathan Matus.

Beard made his announcement via Facebook. He will apparently be starting his own business, although it’s not entirely clear what it will be:

It is with mixed emotions that I’m letting you all know that I’ve decided to leave Facebook to seek my next adventure. For the past four-plus years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most brilliant people on one of the most impactful products the world has ever seen. In addition, I’ve had the pleasure of helping build an ecosystem of incredible developers from innovative startups and established companies. I’m exceptionally proud of the team we’ve built and the work we’ve done, and I’m incredibly enthusiastic about the future of Facebook and platform and know that I’m leaving it in the good hands of people like Dan Rose, Justin Osofksy, Sean Ryan, Douglas Purdy, David Fisch, and Chris Daniels.

Saying goodbye is always hard but I’m looking forward to taking some time off to recharge and re-energize before starting a new venture of my own. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the entire team at Facebook!

The goodbye messages from Matus and Mitic have a similar theme, although the former does give clues that he’ll stay in the mobile and social space:

The lessons picked from working with the best of the best here at Facebook and while helping hundreds of startup developers around the world build better mobile+social apps, will undoubtedly be the most important tools in my tool belt as I work on my next project.

The three executives follow in the wake of CTO Bret Taylor in June and Open Graph product manager Carl Sjogreen.

All these staff leaving might not be great for Facebook: investors won’t be happy that it can’t retain key executives but it could provide a potential boon to Silicon Valley.

Think about it. These are people who have the experience of having helped Facebook reach 955-million users. Post-IPO, they’re also flush with cash. Maybe not as much as they were hoping for but flush nonetheless.

At least one side effect of this is that they’ll be less dependent on investors and more free to spend money on what they need when starting their business.