Linden Lab hires another from Adobe Systems
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 29th 2008 at 5:00PM
Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Tom Hale, formerly Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe Systems has been hired to fill what is apparently a new role at Linden Lab: Chief Product Officer. Hale, as CPO will be reporting to new Lab CEO, Mark Kingdon.
Hale isn't the actually first to be poached away from Adobe Systems to the Lab recently. Clare Rees, a Senior Group Manager there was recently hired as the Lab's new European Marketing Director. Marketing what and marketing to whom -- this is not yet clear.
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Nowhere in the press-release does it say actually what a Chief Product Officer's role would even be in the context of Linden Lab, and the Lab won't answer any questions about it. Linden Lab isn't actually a product-oriented company.
The Lab represents a single homogenous managed service at the present time. It is possible that the hiring of Hale supports our theories that the Lab tends to turn around and start converting portions of the platform into something that can be packaged as a definable product.
Marketers with no visible marketing, a Chief Product Officer without a visible product, and a public relations arm without any visible public relations. CEO Kingdon is obviously taking the company somewhere; driving to some goal -- but what and where?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jacek Antonelli said on 7:26PM 9-29-2008
Apparently, according to the press release, "Second Life is made up of an unusually complex array of products". Which I suppose is true, if you look at it the right way: client, sim, various web services, etc. Sure, LL is largely providing a "service", but the service is access to products, which apparently need to be chiefly officered.
That's not to say that LL isn't planning to market some product -- say, a scaled-back sim for corporations to install on their own internal servers. But I'd think a CPO would be useful even if they aren't.
P.S. Image win! :D
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Tateru Nino said on 9:39PM 9-29-2008
Ah, but a lot of those products aren't Linden Lab products, and many others simply aren't usable without all of the rest.
FlipperPA Peregrine said on 8:29AM 9-30-2008
They seem to like Macromedia / Adobe hires for marketing; don't forget, they hired David Fleck a few years back as well, although I don't remember him being at the Lab for long.
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