"Finally!" (Photo: flickr.com/jurvetson)

According to a tweet sent out a few moments ago by @CNBC, Facebook has officially named COO Sheryl Sandberg to its board of directors. The Facebook team confirmed the move on their press page. We'd hasten to congratulate the social network on this one, but then we remember that she should've been on the board in the first place. C'est la vie.

But maybe the move will satisfy the woman's group Ultraviolet, which previously held protests to pressure the company into adding a woman to its all-male board. (Turnout was slim.) The group also posted a petition back in April with the same goal.

According to a Facebook press release:

“Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. “Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board.”

Ms. Sandberg's appointment comes on the heels of a rather embarrassing article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal about the frat boy culture of Facebook's early halcyon days. In the piece, early Facebook employee Katherine Losse painted Ms. Sandberg as a veritable badass.

"You see, I'm so good that I make things happen and no one even knows about them," Ms. Losse quotes Ms. Sandberg as saying.

Ladies and gents, meet your newest Facebook board member.

Feminist activist Shelby Knox, she of early aughts documentary fame, tweeted the following: "Tomorrow, feminists are rallying in front of Facebook's NYC office to ask them to put women on their board. Join us?"

The rally is scheduled for tomorrow, April 25th, at noon, when UltraViolet intends to deliver the signed petition to the Facebook offices.

A screenshot of UltraViolet's petition. (weareultraviolet.org)

UltraViolet, a progressive women's rights group that has gained more than 300,000 members in the mere three months it's been active, launched a campaign today aiming to get Facebook to add a woman to its board of directors before the company's IPO.

As The New Yorker wrote in an eloquent profile, though Sheryl Sandberg is the widely-recognized female COO at Facebook, she was never given a position on the board, which is currently populated entirely by white dudes. Considering Facebook's tendency to bow to the demands of the public, UltraViolet's organizers think their petition will put enough pressure on the company to finally add an XX to their XY circlejerk. Nita Chaudary, cofounder of UltraViolet, said in an email to members:

"The fact that a company as large as Facebook with a massive global reach does not have a single woman on their board is nothing short of shameful. Facebook owes [its] success and makes a ton of money off of its women users. Women are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the sharing that happens on the site. In addition, women account for more than 70% daily fan activity on the site which is a huge source of revenue for the company. Facebook has a problem and they need to solve it before they go public. Mark Zuckerberg should live up to his company's mission statement and appoint at least one woman to the board today."

UltraViolet is funded by the Citizen Engagement Lab, and has grown tremendously over the past few months. Focusing on employing social media to reach new supporters, UltraViolet tries to combine the ideas of armchair activism with actually getting out there and acting. The method seems to be working: they teamed up with MoveOn in February to pressure the Susan G. Komen Foundation to reverse its decision about defunding Planned Parenthood. The petition garnered 60,000 signatures in just a few hours, and two days later, Komen caved.

Here at Ladybeat, we're all for encouraging women to take on important roles in technology. Plus, Facebook could have avoided this mess entirely by putting Ms. Sandberg on the board in the first place. Oops.