Former Yahoo and Microsoft Media Exec Scott Moore Tapped as Cheezburger President and COO
Cheezburger, the Seattle-based humor site famous for LOLcat photos, has hired well-known former Yahoo and Microsoft exec Scott Moore as its new president and COO.
Moore will be “responsible for extending the Cheezburger brand, as it increasingly becomes a major player in the digital media and entertainment industry,” the company said in a press release. He will be in charge of product, technology, sales, marketing and account management, and will report to Cheezburger founder and CEO Ben Huh.
Interestingly, he will also become a director of the company, best known for its I Can Has Cheezburger? site.
Still, for all its attention, Cheezburger has yet to break out big. The site said it has more than 15,000 submissions uploaded daily, but only seven million unique U.S. monthly visitors in desktop and mobile combined.
Still, Cheezburger has raised major bucks — close to $40 million in funding — from such investors as Foundry Group, SoftBank Capital, Avalon Ventures and Madrona Venture Group.
Presumably, Moore is charged with upping the company’s business prospects.
Most recently, Moore was at Hibu, running the digital side for a company that offers services for businesses. Before that, he ran Microsoft’s MSN portal; he also had been head of media at Yahoo. Moore was also president of MSNBC.com and publisher of Slate.
In an interview last night, Huh said that kind of deep digital and media expertise was the appeal of hiring Moore.
“Cheezburger has been aiming to be a mainstream entertainment destination, and it’s important for us to have a leader who understands both,” said Huh. “It is critical that the two sides play well together.”
Moore said that he was attracted to the humor category, and thought Cheezburger had the right mix of social, mobile and family-oriented — read, not raunchy — user-generated content that advertisers liked.
“Cheezburger content is uniquely suited to take advantage of mobile, and there is a lot of upside potential,” he said. “It has an incredibly strong audience that is eager to consume even more.”
