ivory nonperforming: Mark Zuckerberg's sister now working for Google

Monday, August 6, 2012

Mark Zuckerberg's sister now working for Google

by Leigh Goessl

Created on: August 04, 2012

This past week word got out on the web that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister is now working for Google Inc. This employment status came about after the company she works for was purchased by the search engine giant.

Arielle Zuckerberg is a Junior Product Manager at Wildfire Interactive, Inc., the company Google had announced it purchased this past week. According to

Mashable, Google had issued an announcement about the acquisition news on July 31.

As the word was getting out, NBC News reported older sister Randi Zuckerberg,? a former Facebook team member, had tweeted, ?Congrats Wildfire! There are officially now more Zuckerberg family members working for Google than Facebook! #awkward ;)"

The other family member referred to in this tweet is Harry Schmidt, who is married to another Zuckerberg sibling, Donna. Randi had branched out on her own and no longer works for Facebook. Business Insider reported Mark had tried to recruit Arielle to work at Facebook at an earlier time, but she opted to branch out on her own as well.

Arielle had commented about her new employment status change on her Facebook page.

The Los Angeles Times posted a screen shot where the Zuckerberg sibling wrote, ?I?m in Israel on Birthright and I just found out that I?m now a Google employee,? she wrote. ?Not gonna lie? This feels pretty awkward, but I also feel very proud to be part of the Wildfire team on this exciting day for Alain and Victoria.?

The screen shot shows fellow Wildfire employee Schmidt responded to her post, "We'll be awkward together, it'll be totally awesome.

Facebook and Google have been competing for some time now. Facebook has clearly dominated the social media market with Google always looking in from the outside, as earlier social media-rooted products the company had launched, failed. However, with last year's release of Google+ the company hoped to finally make a dent in this highly coveted market. In Dec. 2011, it was announced Google+ reached 60 million members, still a far cry from the 900 million Facebook would announce a few months later as it filed for its IPO.

Forbes reported that Google purchased Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing company, from "under competitor Facebook's nose".

If Google succeeds with its mission to successfully compete in social media remains to be seen and likely too earlier to project. After all, it took Facebook at least a good four years to begin to catch up to former social media king MySpace.

Whichever way it plays out though, it looks as if there will be a Zuckerberg on each team.

If anything, there should be some lively discussion at family get-togethers.

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