Reports out today suggest that social media giants Facebook have embarked on a major structural reshuffle in order to enhance their new blockchain research project. We now know that Facebook have established a blockchain research working group in order to investigate and research the implications of blockchain technologies both within Facebook and within the wider community. It is important that Facebook carry out such research if they wish to stay ahead of the trend. Blockchain technology has great implications for social media and therefore, this is something that Facebook need to keep on top of.

According to Pymnts.com, Evan Chang has been given the new position of Director of Engineering, Blockchain at Facebook. Furthermore:

“Before taking the latest position, Cheng led programming languages and runtimes at the tech firm. And, prior to arriving at Facebook, Cheng worked at Apple for 10 years. His most recent position at that tech firm was a senior manager. While at Apple, Cheng also worked in areas such as compilation as well as back-end engineering.”

Moreover:

“But Cheng has tweeted about blockchain topics. In addition, reports say that he serves as an advisor to startups and projects in the blockchain space such as ChainLink and Zilliqa. Beyond Cheng, it has been reported that Kevin Weil has taken the position of Facebook’s vice president of product, blockchain.”

See more for yourself,

here

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By appointing new leadership, Facebook are ensuring that this research team are here for the long run. Importantly, Cheng will be responsible for guiding the research project through to what we can only imagine will be a development team. Unlike many blockchain research projects, that simply just do the research and report on it, we can only expect that Facebook will be using this team to go on to build an actual product, what that product will be yet is still very much unknown.

As it stand, we doubt even Facebook know at the moment.