Facebook has scooped up another former Apple employee. This time Richard Williamson is joining the social network’s team. Williamson was previously the head of Apple’s mapping efforts and was part of the original iPhone team. Williamson joined Facebook in the last few weeks as a manager within its expanding mobile-software group.
Williamson was employed at Apple for more than ten years. During his time at Apple, he was one of the engineers assigned by Steve Jobs to build software for the iPhone and was later put in charge of creating Apple’s own mapping system to replace Google Maps on the iPhone and iPad. Williamson was fired in November as part of a management shakeup after Apple Maps was released and widely criticized.
A number of Apple’s iPhone software group members have also moved to Facebook as CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks to reach customers on mobile devices with their own Home offering. Apple alumni played an important role in the development of Facebook’s recently introduced mobile product, Home.
Zuckerberg also hired other former Apple employees, including Greg Novick, a former iPhone manager who helped develop the device’s touch interface, Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, software engineers who joined Facebook when it acquired their company Push Pop Press, and software engineers Scott Goodson, Tim Omernick and Chris Tremblay.
In a similar move, Facebook also hired Loren Brichter, the software designer behind Twitter’s original iPhone app and the word-puzzle game Letterpress. Brichter also previously worked at Apple, and has been hired by Facebook as a consultant.
Image Credit: ETCleanFuels
