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It's good news to me to hear that the initiative to find a more experienced executive at Facebook is being spearheaded by Mark Zuckerberg himself.

With the probable goal of going public in about two years, there needs to be someone there that is able to put the company in readiness for that effort.

Even though Zuckerberg has a great vision for the social networking site, he doesn't have the skills to market and monetize it. That needs to be in place before the company goes public, otherwise a profitable company will be an illusion rather than a reality.

Citing someone close to the company, Allthingsd said “It has to be someone who does not overshadow Mark. But also someone who can challenge him when he needs challenging. And everyone needs challenging.”

Some company investors as well as employees add that while there is a good group of people in place, like Vice President of Product Marketing and Operations Chamath Palihapitiya; Matt Cohler, who will have the title of vice president of product management; CTO Adam D’Angelo: CFO Gideon Yu; Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Engineering Dustin Moskovitz and Jonathan Heiliger, VP of Technical Operations, it doesn't address the need to have someone who can have a strong influence on Zuckerberg, and having one executive in the No. 2 position will do it better than a collective.

Again, all of this is the early steps of preparation for an IPO down the road. Most people wouldn't be too apt to confidently invest their money in Facebook with the current leadership in place. They have to figure out how to make money with it, while having strong corporate governance at the top, something Zuckerberg at this time isn't able to do.

Facebook definitely needs to have someone that is the opposite of Zuckerberg to balance the leadership at the top. As I said at the beginning of the post, the fact that Zuckerberg realizes this is good news, as it shows he's not too full of himself at his young age, as well as is thinking what's best for the company going forward. That shows that he's growing past being simply a geek riding a temporary wave. That, more than anything else, is a step forward for Zuckerberg and Facebook.