WebProNews

Yahoo's VP Of Social Platforms Turns To eBay

Even as Facebook and Google continue to gear up for a battle for social supremacy, Yahoo's losing an important member of its social media team to a different organization.  Neal Sample, the company's vice president of social platforms, is taking a job at eBay.

Search For Google Music Chief May Be Underway

According to Google's own people, Google Music - which might be a music download service designed to let users store songs in the cloud at some point - will launch this year.  Trouble is, the Google Music project doesn't have any sort of public leader, and Google's now supposedly trying to remedy that problem.

Google Makes Slide Founder VP Of Engineering

Immediately following Google's acquisition of Slide, it was unclear whether or not founder Max Levchin would join the search giant.  Now the matter's been resolved in a decisive manner, as Google's confirmed that Levchin will in fact be a vice president of engineering.

Google Loses Games Advocate After Four Months

It's widely accepted that Google is one of the world's best employers, and every open position is fought over by a multitude of applicants.  However, a man who was supposed to help bridge the gap between Google and the gaming industry has left after only about four months on the job. Mark DeLoura held the title "Developer Advocate, Games," and he doesn't seem to have been lured away by another company.  DeLoura didn't cite any other usual excuse for quitting, either.  As a result, his departure may turn out to be a problem for Google.

Twitter Names President Of Revenue

Here's something for individuals who have expressed concern about Twitter's underwhelming financial achievements: three and a half years after the company was officially founded, Adam Bain has been appointed Twitter's president of revenue. Bain previously enjoyed the title "President, Audience Network" at Fox Interactive Media.  He's worked for Fox Sports, the Los Angeles Times, and Cleveland.com, too.

Google To Establish New Ops Center In Ireland

The number of people Google employs in Ireland should soon grow by 200.  Google's announced that it intends to establish a new operations center in the country, and the company's wasting no time in getting it up and running.

Google Gets BBC Exec To Manage News, Books Deals

The world's largest broadcaster has lost an important executive to Google.  Madhav Chinnappa, who held the title of "Head of Business Development & Rights" at the BBC, is now supposed to help Google News and Google Books find more partners and handle the current lot. Chinnappa's rather lengthy new title is "Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google News & Books," and he should be well-suited to the position.  The contacts he must have made while working for the BBC will be worth a lot alone.

Zynga Puts Owen Van Natta Over Business Operations

Zynga, the social gaming company that makes apps for both Facebook and MySpace, now has one additional connection to those two companies.  Zynga named Owen Van Natta Executive Vice President of Business Operations this afternoon. Van Natta was, as you may remember, Facebook's COO for a while.  He served as CEO of MySpace for a relatively short period of time, as well.  So this move is perhaps a bit of a step down for him, title-wise.

Ex-Googler Discusses Life At Facebook

More and more, experts are starting to anticipate a war between Facebook and Google as the second company makes moves in the social networking space.  Especially timely, then, is a blog post by a former Google employee who's now celebrating three years spent working for Facebook.

Spotify Lead Designer Heads To Facebook

Spotify, the popular-in-Europe music streaming service that hasn't quite made it to the U.S., will soon be down a lead designer.  Rasmus Andersson announced today that he'll be leaving the company in order to join Facebook. We'll note right here that this development doesn't necessarily mean Facebook intends to launch a new music service.  Andersson indicated on his blog that he'll be a product designer, not Head of Music Initiatives or something quite so grand.