Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Leaders Shift Focus During Crisis

Will Cathcart, who runs WhatsApp, is doing whatever he can to keep the Facebook messaging service from crashing under a crush of users. Fidji Simo, who runs Facebook’s main app, plans to give small businesses a way to fundraise through the site. And Vishal Shah, a top executive at Instagram, is making live broadcasting more appealing on the photo-sharing app. 

Like most leaders in the tech industry, the people who run Facebook’s highest-profile products have seen their jobs turned upside down over the last few weeks, as the coronavirus pandemic has forced them to ditch plans that now seem irrelevant while turning to other matters that are suddenly immediate necessities. In interviews with The Information, Cathcart, Simo and Shah talked about how their priorities have shifted in the past few weeks. They were less clear about how the economic fallout from the pandemic would hurt Facebook’s advertising business, though it almost certainly will.