Joanna Shields, who heads up Google's European strategic partnerships team, has agreed to run a new international division at social-networking site Bebo.
The move comes only days after MySpace launched its French site, and one of Shields's jobs will be to increase Bebo's presence in Europe, the Financial Times reports. Shields will also tackle ventures such as access via mobile phone and partnerships with music and entertainment companies.
Bebo wants to expand both its reach and profitability. It became profitable last fall and has over 30 million members worldwide.
Nielsen/NetRatings puts Bebo as the third most popular social-networking site in the U.S., with 1.35 million unique monthly users, compared with MySpace's 53.6 million. In the U.K., Bebo is second behind MySpace with 2.7 million monthly users, and trails MySpace there by only 2.4 million users.
