Ruane takes on the role, which is understood to have an expanded remit, following the departure of Sophy Tobias for Instagram at the end of last year.
She joins after just over a year as director of corporate comms EMEA for The Walt Disney Company, which she joined after four-and-a-half years leading PR for Microsoft’s Xbox, also across the EMEA region.
Previous agency experience also includes two years in the New York-based role of vice-president for Cohn & Wolfe.
Facebook’s strong recovery from a bumpy IPO in 2012 was marked this summer by a surge of valuation in the company to $192bn (£118bn) after Q2 revenue surged by 61 per cent.
However, reports indicate that growth of users in the UK market has reached a plateau at around 31 million users, while earlier this summer the company was forced to apologise for "poor communication" over a series of psychological tests performed on 700,000 users globally in 2012.
PRWeek understands that ahead of the appointment of Ruane the role was handled on an interim basis by the social media giant’s European comms head Stefano Hesse with support from incumbent agency Blue Rubicon.
