Former Google managing director joins YouTube rival
Dailymotion, the video sharing website, has appointed former Google managing director Kate Burns (pictured) to the same role. It is the first time that the site, a competitor to YouTube, has had a managing director.
She will be charged with improving brand awareness of the site and driving visitors to it. Burns will report to the Dailymotion chief executive Mark Zaleski, who is based in Paris.
The French-owned website, which claims to be the largest independent video sharing site, was launched three years ago. It is already launched in the US.
Burns left Google, which bought YouTube in 2006, last summer after six years with the company. She joined the search engine giant in 2001, where she rose to managing director for the UK, Ireland and the Benelux countries. Prior to that, she was pan-European sales director at Altavista. She also spent three years at now Google-owned Doubleclick.
Dailymotion received £16.8m in funding in September last year from AGF Private Equity and Advent Venture Partners. The company says its users post around 15,000 new videos every day, generating more than 26 million page views. It offers officially licensed content from Channel 4, Viacom and Universal as well as user-generated content.
