Of course Sandberg’s been making the media rounds to promote the book. This week Kate Losse, an early Facebook employee who once wrote speeches for Mark Zuckerberg and published a memoir about her experience there, posted a critical review of the book in Dissent magazine.

Here’s how current Sandberg rep and former Facebook PR chief/Losse coworker Brandee Barker responded:

Wow. twitter.com/fake_train/sta…

— kate losse (@fake_train) March 27, 2013

Alright then!

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Brandee Barker

In a portion of Facebook‘s statement published on AllThingsD, the company confirms Barker’s departure, saying that she’s stepping down “to start a communications consulting business focused on early stage tech companies.”

Barker was on maternity leave earlier this year, only recently returning.

“I had a pretty deep evaluation when I was away from the company that what I am good at and what I like is working with early-stage companies and the teams,” she told AllThingsD.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Margit Wennmachers, co-founder of Outcast Communications — a mid-size agency that handles high profile clients including Facebook and Yahoo — is leaving the agency to join venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a partner.

Reports Kara Swisher of AllThingsD, “The move will make her one of a handful of women at high-profile venture outfits.” Outcast co-founder Caryn Marooney will now run the agency, which was acquired by holding company Next Fifteen Communications in 2005.

UPDATE: PRNewser just spoke with Marooney, who said, “We are always looking for great smart people at every level, but we’re not looking to replace or add a partner at this time.” She also sees opportunity in the move. “Being close to the venture community is something we’ve always done. As long as we can provide the best service for [companies] it can definitely be a fun win win situation,” she said.

The agency continues to see growth, recently picking up work with online music portal Vevo. Facebook director of communications Brandee Barker is also very happy with the agency’s work. “Facebook loves Outcast,” she said this past November.

Andreessen Horowitz is an Outcast Communications client.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

You know an issue has gone mainstream when it hits the cover of TIME magazine. Facebook’s privacy issues are front and center in the magazine’s next issue.

We gather that overall Facebook PR is actually somewhat pleased with the article, as it does little digging into new issues around privacy, but instead brings forth information that is mostly already public to a larger audience.

Facebook director of communications Brandee Barker, now on maternity leave, “liked” the article on her Facebook account.

However, there was one minor PR snafu that made it to print.

Author Dan Fletcher included in the story that a company spokesman “got tripped up trying to explain to me why my co-worker has a shorter privacy-controls menu than I do.”

“Ultimately, very little that’s new is revealed in the article,” writes Nick O’Neill at our sibling blog AllFacebook.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Lets review. In response to the endless drumbeat about privacy concerns, The New York Times posted a Q&A with Facebook PR Chief Elliot Schrage [pictured], where he came off as condescending and arrogant — PC World called it, “the most egregious display of corporate doublespeak this side of Microsoft” — but also admitted to communications mistakes:

“It’s clear that despite our efforts, we are not doing a good enough job communicating the changes that we’re making. Even worse, our extensive efforts to provide users greater control over what and how they share appear to be too confusing for some of our more than 400 million users.”

The Times also posted a large info-graphic outlining the social network’s massively confusing privacy settings and noting that their privacy policy document is longer than the U.S. Constitution.

One blog posted a college era IM exchange from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in which he called Facebook users “dumb f*cks” for uploading their info to the site. Regardless of the context of the exchange, it forced the company to publicly respond.

Three New York University students created their own “private Facebook,” raised $100,000 so far to support it, and received a ton of press.

Also, a security hole with partner site Yelp, “would allow a malicious site to immediately harvest a Facebook user’s name, email, and data shared with ‘everyone’ on Facebook, with no action required on the user’s part…”

Their have also been new privacy complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which Facebook addressed by hiring former FTC Chairman Tim Muris.

Oh, and the government is still looking into the social network.

Meanwhile, some bloggers, PRNewser included, are offering up free PR advice to the company.

We can only imagine things are more than busy at Outcast Communications, Facebook’s PR agency of record, and that Facebook director of communications Brandee Barker is still glad she picked the perfect time to go on maternity leave.

However, our guess is that this won’t have a drastic affect on Facebook’s user base. Our latest PRNewser poll, albeit with a small sample size, shows that zero percent of PRNewser readers have deleted their Facebook account so far, although 58 percent of respondents said the social network’s privacy changes, “have definitely made me consider deleting my account.”

What’s your take? Take the poll, or leave your thoughts in the comments.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Facebook has been facing heat lately over a number of privacy issues, from integrating user information with third party websites, to inadvertently exposing chat logs, to drawing ire from consumer groups.

The negative feedback included a recent A1 New York Times story, titled, “Facebook Glitch Brings New Privacy Worries.”

Ethan Beard, director of Facebook’s developer network, dismissed the much of the noise as media chatter.

“There’s been a lot of interest from the media, from organizations and officials. But to be honest, the user response has been overwhelmingly positive,” he told Computerworld, without citing any specific feedback or data from Facebook’s more than 400 million users. Also, Ethan, here’s one big lesson in PR: don’t blame the media.

Certainly, Beard believes in some sort assemblance of privacy. When one visits his Facebook profile, the following message is displayed: “Ethan only shares some of his profile information with everyone. If you know Ethan, send him a message or add him as a friend.”

An interesting tidbit to note in relation to all of this is that Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker happened to go on maternity leave this week.

Taking all of this into account, we asked a a few technology PR pros for their opinions on the matter. After the jump are some thoughts from Chaim Haas, Senior Vice President, Technology & Emerging Media at Kaplow Communications. Specifically, Haas lays out three things Facebook could have done better, and three things they should do moving forward, from a PR perspective.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Facebook’s director of corporate communications Brandee Barker is on maternity leave until mid-October.

“I’m expecting a boy, my first and a welcome diversion after nearly four years of PR at Facebook!” Barker told PRNewser today.

Don’t worry, reporters. The Facebook PR team will be picking up the slack. “There are a number of people that will be assisting in her coverage while she is away,” a Facebook spokesperson told PRNewser.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Facebook Director, Corporate Communcations Brandee Barker jokingly responds to a headline from U.K. newspaper The Sun, which read: “Syphilis Soars in U.K., Thanks to Facebook.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

TechCrunch giving awards to PR firms is like Glenn Beck giving out a Pulitzer Prize. TechCrunch loves PR firms just about as much as Beck loves the “liberal” media.

That being said, the finalists for the “Best Tech PR” Crunchie Award are:

Brew Media Relations

LaunchSquad

OutCast Communications

PerkettPR

Spark

SutherlandGold Group

Vote here. It seems Facebook PR head Brandee Barker has already cast her vote, via the above tweet.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Brandee Barker, Facebook’s Director of Communications is looking for the best tech/internet PR agencies. The search is not for Facebook, she says. Her second Tweet, “Facebook loves Outcast,” refers to the social network’s agency Outcast Communications.

Barker is looking for a friend, she told PRNewser.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It looks like as Facebook moves towards a potential IPO, or at least in a direction to prove they will become a profitable company in the long term, the company is working on polishing its spin tactics.

The tech media is digging in on the departure this week of CFO Gideon Yu, which the company backed up by saying they needed a CFO with “public company experience.” Not everyone is buying that reasoning, especially since Facebook’s previous CFO already had public company experience. Writes Silicon Alley Insider’s Nicholas Carlson:

Bringing in Sheryl Sandberg and Elliot Schrage, Mark Zuckerberg hired two executives who are very good at PR. Since when you’re holding a hammer everything looks like a nail, Facebook now focuses far more on its public image than it ever used to. Says one source, “entire meetings are about PR and what we’re going to say to the public. In the old days [PR] was almost scorned.”

Currently Facebook works with Outcast Communications in addition to its internal team led by Brandee Barker.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.