AOL’s Bebo seems to be growing a little stronger in terms of personnel; although it’s not stealing directly from a certain search giant, the social network’s newest hire acted as an exec at Dailymotion, and some time before that, Google.
Kate Burns
Kate Burns will start at Bebo on August 4th, and Mark Sweney describes her past and future by writing, “Burns, who was Google’s first employee outside the US and its first UK managing director, is leaving her role as UK managing director of online video website Dailymotion after just four months. She will join Bebo Europe in the newly created position of vice-president and managing director.”
This should place her over Bebo’s operations in the UK, Ireland, and Poland. Even more importantly, as the social network tries to expand into the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France before the year’s out, Burns will also be behind that push.
Since AOL spent $850 million to acquire Bebo – and since onlookers often suggested that price was too high – she’ll be under quite a bit of pressure to perform well. But that helps explain why the company went after such an experienced (and presumably expensive) hand.
Meanwhile, according to Google Trends for Websites, Bebo has managed to pass MySpace in terms of a daily unique user count in the UK.
