Linden Lab announced today that Ebbe Altberg has been named its new Chief Executive Officer, and he reports on Twitter (his tag is @ebbealtberg) that he'll begin work on Monday, February 10. Most recently COO with BranchOut, he was formerly senior vice president of media engineering at Yahoo! (and before that the vice president, head of audience for Yahoo! Europe in Rolle, Switzerland) and also had stints at Ingenio and Microsoft. BranchOut, which Altberg had joined in October, 2012, dubs itself "the largest professional community on Facebook with more than 30 million users in over 200 countries," allowing "people to build their professional brands by sharing photos and posts that dynamically showcase their professional skills, expertise and accomplishments."
He's originally from Sweden and indicates on his Facebook page that he graduated from Tärnaby skidhem in 1983. ("Tärnaby is a small place in the northern part of Sweden," says my Swedish SL friend Padani, who adds that "skidhem" means "ski home"—see here for photos. "It's a Folkhögskola," continues Padani, "a school for grownups, not for children. He must have tried a career as a downhill skier once, otherwise he wouldn't have attended.") He then moved on to Middlebury College in Vermont, graduating in 1988.
I think he likes speed: There's the skiing; his son, Aleks, races cars professionally and is an instructor for Lamborghini; and Ebbe once gave a playful thumbs up on Facebook to proposed legislation to ticket drivers going too slowly in the fast lane. So I'm guessing he'll be a champion in the fight against lag. ;)
I very helpfully suggested the name Alt Linden (and wouldn't "altberg" mean a mountain of alts?), but he politely set that aside. Welcome to Second Life, Ebbe.
Hi! First, i want to congratulate Ebbe for his nomination. And reading this post, i was giggling.... if he really likes speed... maybe he will catch the lag monster on SL. *wink*
ReplyDeleteHis background is quite different than Rod Humble's was, but that doesn't mean he can't bring a skill set and leadership to the job to affect change. Let's see where we are in six months.
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