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> "Then we have the recent departure of Blake Ross, the company's Director of Products. In his now removed goodbye letter he mentioned that he did an informal survey and found that teenagers would actually answer 'no' to the question of whether they still viewed Facebook as 'cool', and this influenced his decision to leave the company."

Blake Ross was being sarcastic.

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I agree that he was being sarcastic about whether this was a realistic reason for him leaving. But I still think it's telling that he made the joke - it seems to me to indicate that there's some perception, internally, that teenagers no longer view them as cool.

For example, if I were to leave Google, and had the same sense of humor as Blake Ross, I might say something like "I'm leaving Google because my mom and her friends don't use Google+. But seriously..." I wouldn't actually leave Google for that reason, but it doesn't make it an untrue statement.

its more likely he was mocking doomsayer articles like this one

Mockery only functions one way. If a customer mocks a company representative, it's an accusation. If a company representative mocks a customer, it's an acknowledgement.

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