Earlier today Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted on the company blog that some personnel changes have been made to the Facebook Connect and Platform leadership teams, in an effort to help Facebook Connect and Platform grow and provide resources for third party applications. From the looks of it, this is an executive shuffle, where existing Facebook employees are taking on new roles within the company.

for starters, Mike Vernal will be taking over as the new manager of the Connect and Platform engineering teams. Vernal was previously involved in building Facebook Connect, and Zuckerberg notes that Vernal has already been involved with thinking through some of the upcoming challenges Facebook Connect will have as it continues to grow.

Charlie Cheever, who helped launch the Facebook Platform, will be an engineering manager focusing on the vague job description of building new products and ways for people to share information.

Next up is Ethan Beard, who’s moving from his business development role to the director of Platform Marketing. With experience in working with companies towards the adoption of Facebook Connect, Beard will be leaning on this and existing relationships to help both Connect and Platform grow larger. Lastly,Elliot Schrage will be taking on more marketing responsibilities for Facebook.

While Zuckerberg doesn’t go into many details about some of the new roles for the leadership positions for Facebook Connect and Platform, his announcement of the executive shuffle is indicative of the level of importance that Facebook and Platform and Connect has for Facebook’s future and growth. As the number of sites that use Connect approaches the same number of applications already on Facebook’s platform, the company is ready to push both of these products forward.

Especially as Facebook continues to seek out a stable monetization option for its social network, and also continues to rely heavily on third party developers to maintain the position of being the platform standard its become in the social networking realm, it’s extremely important to promote Connect and the Platform.