Facebook's head of communications to leave company

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Joe Lockhart, FacebookInc's head of global communications and a former presssecretary for President Bill Clinton, is leaving the socialnetworking company, Facebook said.

Lockhart, who is the latest high-profile executive to departFacebook following its disappointing initial public offering inMay, is leaving 15 months after joining the world's No.1 socialnetwork.

A Facebook spokeswoman said that Lockhart is leaving becausehe decided he wanted to remain on the East Coast, and did notwant to move to California, where Facebook is headquartered.

Lockhart's last day at Facebook has not yet been determined.The Facebook spokeswoman said the company hopes to continue towork with Lockhart as an independent consultant.

Lockhart was the chief spokesman and senior adviser toPresident Clinton between 1998 and 2000, and co-founded theGlover Park Group communications firm in 2001.

Facebook, which announced on Thursday that it had surpasseda billion monthly active users, ranks among the Web's mostpopular destinations alongside websites owned by Google Inc, Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc .

But the company has faced a rough reception on Wall Street,as concerns about its slowing revenue growth rate has cut itsmarket valuation by more than 40 percent.

Shares of Facebook were down 2.6 percent at $21.37 in middaytrading on Friday.

In June, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylorannounced that he would leave the company, and Facebook'sdirector of platform partnerships and its director of productmanagement have also departed in recent months.

News of Lockhart's move was first reported by the technologyblog AllThingsD.com.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Keywords: FACEBOOK LOCKHART/