Larry Yu, who helped Mark Zuckerberg talk to his millions of cranky users and slobbering reporters for the past half-decade, just exited.

He broke the news on his Facebook page:

Nearly five years ago, I joined some friends at a privately-held company called Facebook to help a small team scale and expand upon the company’s story. That journey was, in a word, crazy. And fun. Terrifying. And gratifying. So I’m off to do it again. I’m joining my friends Brandee, Brian and Sean to help build The Pramana Collective, a project-focused communications consultancy that works with cool companies. To the amazing people that I was fortunate enough to work with during my time at Facebook — thank you. You’ve taught me so much and I’ll be forever grateful. I could go on, but then I’d be a blubbering mess. So I’ll just say that I am proud to be affiliated with such a remarkable company. And I won’t be far, so this isn’t goodbye. It’s see you around.

Under Yu's reign, FB corporate communications have grown up into an ironclad Silicon Valley politburo, second only perhaps to Apple in sophistication and stormtrooper tactics. Will Facebook be a more human, transparent company now? With controversial, backfiring lobbying on the table, fat chance.

He never exactly sounded ecstatic about FWD.us.

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