Social Media Critic Moving To Facebook

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Paul Adams, the Google researcher who, over the summer excoriated aspects of social networks in a popular slide deck, said today he will be heading to Facebook in the new year.

"After ~4 years in the awesome Google UX team it's time for a change + I'm excited to be joining Facebook in the New Year," he tweeted.

The move is seen as a setback for Google, according to reports. In addition to a social project spearheaded by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, the team Google acquired from Slide also is starting work on an internally developed solution, InsideFacebook said.

Adams, a senior user experience researcher at Google, released The Real Life Social Network, a slideshow that addressed the shortfalls of modern social media and privacy concerns.

"People have multiple facets of identity. There is not one profile that fits for all the people in their life. People appear differently to different audiences. They act one way with their family, they act another way in work, and they act another way with their best friends," said Adams, in the piece.

That report is widely said to have moved Facebook into a so-called lockdown mode, which sparked Facebook Groups. This feature allows users to partition friends into compartments -- keeping work associates separate from social friends, for example.

Before joining Google, Adams worked at Flow Interactive, where he was a user experience consultant.