AOL has appointed Stephane Panier as head of Bebo's global operations. Bebo is Australia's fifth largest social network site behind Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter with a global user base of 24 million.
Panier replaces Joanna Shields, who oversaw Bebo's $850m takeover by AOL in March 2008. He has more than a decade’s experience spanning finance, operations and strategic consultancy. Before joining Bebo in January 2009, Panier worked for Google for six years in both senior Finance and Operations positions.
Bebo continues to suffer from the runaway success of Facebook with Australian market share nearly halving in the past 12 months (Hitwise) and global unique browsers consistently dropping (Comscore)
