Blake Chandlee Leaves Yahoo! For Facebook

Blake Chandlee, Yahoo! commercial director, has been poached by social networking website Facebook top be its UK sales director and first UK employee.

A report from Media Week says that Chandlee – a panelist at MediaTel Group’s ‘Future Of TV’ seminar on Tuesday (see TIOTI Founder Joins MediaTel ‘Future Of TV’ Seminar Panel) – has left Yahoo! to start at Facebook within the next few weeks, speaheading a major push into the UK market.

It is understood that his new role at Facebook will see him build up the social network’s sales team and work with agencies and advertisers to maximise the site’s commercial opportunities.

Chandlee joined Yahoo! in October 2003 as category development officer for consumer packaged goods, before rising to the post of commercial director.

Recent figures from Nielsen//NetRatings showed that since December, Facebook’s audience has grown by 541%, with the site receiving 6.5 million unique users in August (see Facebook And MySpace Visited By One In Five Online Britons).

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