Facebook’s 23 year old CTO, Adam D’Angelo, is leaving the company to “take time off” reports Kara Swisher of All Things D. As Mashable points out most of the other top execs at Facebook are of the class of circa-2004 with ex-Googlers Gideon Yo as CFO and Sheryl Sandberg as COO.

The question remains as to whether this strengthens Zuckerberg’s control on the company or weakens it? Currently, Hubdub is forecasting he has a 83% chance of still being CEO of Facebook at the end of this year. That chance dipped at the end of February when rumors emerged of Facebook wanting to make management changes but it quite quickly recovered to its current level.

If Facebook want to IPO in 2009 then they will want to get these management changes through as early this year as possible. Would they seriously want to IPO with Zuckerberg at the helm? Will Zuckerberg still be CEO at the end of 2008?

Also covering the story are Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat and Inquisitr (Duncan Riley’s truly excellent new blog).

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By Nigel (Technology Editor)

Techcrunch is reporting that Facebook fatigue is setting in with the number of visitors in the US down; dipping by 800,000 in January. There may be some seasonal effect as MySpace also dipped but not by as much as Facebook despite being larger. The Guardian is reporting an even bigger drop in the UK, with Facebook visitor numbers down 5% on December.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer but one data point is usually more than enough for Robert Scoble to draw a line. In his recent post, Is Facebook Doomed?, he links Facebook’s downturn to it’s limitation of 5,000 friends which seems to affect the sum total of one person, Robert Scoble!

I guess by that twisted form of internet mathematics, Scoble equals 800,000 visitors. I can see a new unit of measurement, a Scoble! With 33.9 million US visitors Facebook is at 42.4 Scobles, which is surely a much easier number to remember.

But what does this mean for Zuckerberg? BoomTown is reporting that senior management changes are happening in Facebook with them looking to hire a seasoned technology veteran (an unZuckerberg) to act as a steady hand to Zuckerberg who would retain the CEO position. But the question has to be asked: Will the right candidate want to report to a 23 year old (even one as visionary and successful as Mark)?

Will Zuckerberg still be CEO by the end of 2008? None of the pundits are making predictions on it but Hubdub users are currently forecasting there is only a 63% chance that he will. And that’s down from 90% just over a month ago.

Will Mark Zuckerberg still be CEO of Facebook by the end of 2008?

What do you think? Click here to make your own prediction.

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One of the central design principles behind Hubdub is that people should be held to their public statements. Often a  blogger will predict a company will be a success or failure, however only very rarely does anyone ever check 12 months down the line whether they were right. What if you did check and you found out that blogger you thought was so insightful was wrong more often than he or she was right? Would you still have as much confidence in their predictions?

Three months ago, I made a prediction that Facebook would never see a valuation north of $6 billion (blogged here). Ooops. I guess I am in the hole on that one. But despite my prediction getting blown out of the water I think my analysis still holds. Plus more recently, some other bloggers have started to raise questions such as:

1. How good are your friends recommendations? (Not very says Professor Gita Johar)
2. Does Facebook obey Metcalfe’s law? (No says Cory Doctorow at Information Week, in fact I think Gresham’s law is more applicable)
3. Is Facebook playing fast and loose with user data? (Yes says News.com)

So while I am one prediction down, I’m going to double down on the next one. (Consider it the ‘I’m in a hole, time to get a bigger spade strategy’).

I predict Facebook will not see a valuation north of $15 billion in 3 years.

There, I said it, check back in 3 years time

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