News Byte

Livefyre Names Ramana Rao as CTO

Social commenting and curation startup Livefyre announced on Monday that it has hired Ramana Rao as the company’s new chief technical officer. Before joining Livefyre — which, disclosure, AllThingsD uses for managing site comments — Rao was VP of product at the Washington Post Company after his news aggregation startup, iCurrent, was acquired in 2010.

Here’s Zynga’s New Executive Org Chart

A new org for a new regime under freshly crowned Zynga CEO Don Mattrick.
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LivingSocial CTO and Co-Founder Departs Company

A high-level departure at the social deals site.

Facebook Names Mike Schroepfer CTO

The former VP of Engineering gets a nice title bump.

Twitter Firms Up Top Ranks With CTO, Tightens Product and Design Roles

More changes at the top for Twitter’s C-Suite.

Dreamworks Animation Names New CTO

Lincoln Wallen promoted to top tech job at Hollywood animation studio.

News Byte

Zynga Loses Cloud Tech Expert Allan Leinwand to ServiceNow

Zynga’s CTO of Infrastructure Allan Leinwand has left the social games company, reports GigaOm, which says the executive has assumed a similar role at ServiceNow. Leinwand was a key executive helping to shift the company from Amazon’s cloud services to its own infrastructure. Leinwand follows a string of other departures as the company’s stock continues to trade near all-time lows.

News Byte

OpenTable Hires eHarmony’s Joseph Essas as CTO

OpenTable, which helps restaurants take reservations online, has appointed Joseph Essas to the position of CTO, effective July 18. Previously, Essas was CTO at eHarmony; before that, he served as VP of Engineering of Yahoo’s search-marketing division. In March, OpenTable announced it was on a hunt for a new executive, after it said Charles McCullough, who was the SVP of Engineering, was leaving the company.

Ford’s CTO Drives New Silicon Valley Office Opening (Video)

Can the auto giant go full-geek? And, more to the point, when do we get flying cars?

Using a Cloud Service at the Office Without Permission? You’re Not Alone.

That cloud service you think your boss doesn’t know about?