Facebook opened 6 jobs for its Blockchain team

One of the charges - and the most revealing of future projects - is for a business development chief, which suggests that the company may be looking to activate itself in the negotiation.

Facebook is looking for a "Head of Commercial Development and Partnerships" for Blockchain at its headquarters in Silicon Valley. The qualifications include at least 15 years of negotiation experience for someone who can "lead, grow and mentor a global team of experienced professionals in business development."

It is the sixth and most revealing work of the company for its new Blockchain group. The other five positions are for a Public Policy manager, a Software Engineering manager in Israel, a Media director and two jobs in Marketing. You can see data on jobs here.

Speculation about what Facebook will do in Blockchain has been going around since January, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his 2018 mission statement that he is interested in technology because of how decentralizes power, because Blockchain allows virtually any tracking to be tracked type of digital transaction without a single institution having or controlling it.

The big blow came on May 8, when Facebook Messenger leader David Marcus said he was changing jobs to establish a "small group to explore how to take Blockchain on Facebook, starting from scratch."

Five months earlier, Marcus had joined the board of Coinbase, the main exchange of cryptocurrencies, but he left the board last month, partly to avoid "conflict of interests," a Facebook spokesman said at the time.

Facebook has not said anything about where it goes with Blockchain or even if it is focused on digital currencies. But depending on job offers, it seems to be building an artificial intelligence platform for the project and is considering new financial services and "new ways of sharing information."

The inclusion of a position of Chief of Commercial Development is very illuminating because it shows that large acquisitions have been fundamental for the expansion of Facebook in new areas. In particular, in 2014 Facebook spent USD $ 19 billion on WhatsApp, buying this leading messaging platform. His next two great deals were for the photo application Instagram (USD $ 1 billion) and the virtual reality hardware developer Oculus (USD $ 2 billion).

The new job explains that the executive will help lead "strategies and investments while also negotiating and closing agreements".

Marcus's team on Facebook currently includes Kevin Weil, vice president of Product; James Everingham, Chief of Engineering; Evan Cheng, director of Engineering; and Morgan Beller, who works in Strategy.

Also, last month, Arik Sosman joined the Blockchain group of Facebook as Software Engineer. Sosman, previously an engineer at BitGo, appeared in the news in 2015 for detailing on his blog how Facebook's personal assistant "M" worked with humans, not artificial intelligence.