Dave Morin leaves Facebook to join Napster creator Fanning on new venture

Long-time Facebook employee Dave Morin, who helped build out the social network’s platform and later Facebook Connect, announced he’s leaving to start a new stealth venture with Napster creator Shawn Fanning. Fanning’s last company was the gaming startup Rupture, which he sold to Electronic Arts in 2008. Before that was Snocap, which was bought by Imeem under less than favorable circumstances.

Morin (pictured right) leaves Facebook on good terms and said that he’s always harbored a desire to start his own company. He and Fanning didn’t give any further details on what they’re working on but said they’ll release something “soon.” Plenty of startups from Facebook alumni are cropping up: we’ve covered Quora, from Facebook’s first CTO Adam D’Angelo, and Asana, from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

Morin writes:

“…having a small hand in helping to build the Facebook Platform ecosystem was a deeply meaningful and enlightening one…..

Today I am making a choice to continue following the dream.

I have decided to leave Facebook and partner with my long time friend Shawn Fanning to build a new company and to become part of the Facebook Connect community on the other side. We’ll be exploring a few ideas and hope to come back to you with something interesting soon. Until then, we’ll be in a stealth’ish mode.”