Industry Moves: eMusic CEO-Venrock; ESPN; Linden Lab; WSJ; eBay
This story was written by Amanda Natividad.
-- Venrock-eMusic CEO: Outgoing eMusic CEO David Pakman is joining the venerated VC firm Venrock as a Partner in New York City, where he will be part of the recently enhanced Digital Media team led by David Siminoff in Palo Alto. He announced his departure from the online music service earlier this week, though he will be there until end of this year. Pakman will be looking at investing in digital media startups, as he explains here.
-- ESPN: *ESPN* appointed Renee Plato its VP of digital video distribution . She'll now oversee multiplatform distribution efforts for *ESPN* Media and Disney (NYSE: DIS), including broadband, electronic sell through, *ITV* and VOD, and report to SVP-digital distribution, Matt Murphy. Plato joins from *Sony*) BMG, where she served as senior director of business development.
-- Linden Lab: The company behind Second Life has appointed Tom Hale its chief product officer, reporting directly to CEO Mark Kingdon. Hale most recently served as SVP and GM-knowledge worker business at *Adobe*. Release.
-- Evri: Former Facebook general counsel Rudy Gadrew has joined Evri to take on the new position of VP-business operations. He'll be charged with overseeing legal and intellectual property, building audience and driving customer acquisition. Before spending two years at Facebook, he held tech and IP law positions at Beacon Law Advisors, *Amazon* and others.
-- WSJ & DJ: Tomaso Capuano has been promoted to lead design across online and print platforms as the company's design director, having previously served as creative director for the recently launched WSJ magazine. Prior to joining *Dow Jones*, he was the art director of new projects at The Times of London, and was instrumental in several launches and redesigns.
-- eBay: Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen has joined the company's board of directors, effective immediately. Currently, his other focus is social net platform Ning, which he co-founded in 2004 with Gina Bianchini. He also sits on Facebook's board and has invested in entities like Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, Meebo, FunnyorDie, Scribd, among several others. Release.
By Amanda Natividad