Sam Sebastian, a longtime veteran of Classified Ventures’ Homescape real estate vertical, is joining Google to develop its local real estate efforts, and to work on other local advertising efforts. I had previously reported that he was joining as head of Google Local. As Zach Rodgers of ClickZ writes, “Sebastian will not work directly on the Google Local product, but rather within the AdWords sales organization.”
In the new position, Sebastian might build bridges to newspapers. But he also poses something of a threat, since he conceivably knows all the details of classified initiatives of all the Classified Ventures’ newspaper owners, which include Tribune, Knight Ridder, Gannett, McClatchy, Belo and The Washington Post Co.
It isn’t the first time that the portals and search engines have picked up a newspaper veteran. Several years ago, Yahoo picked Knight Ridder Digital head Dan Finnigan to run Hot Jobs, after Finnigan had played a key role in the reconstruction of CareerBuilder.
Finnegan’s colleague, Tim Lambert, was also subsequently recruited to join Yahoo, where he now runs local sales. Yahoo also has former Knight Ridder guy Jamie Glenn running classifieds. Indeed, one clearly sees that that Tony Ridder’s visionary move to San Jose eight years ago really did have dividends….as a talent farm for Yahoo.
Sebastian.
When was the last time a nwspaper picked up a portal or search engine veteran?
Here’s a comment from a reader who didn’t want to be identified. I got a few like this!
“Sam Sebastian could spill all of the details of all of the classified initiatives of all of the CV papers in about 3.8 seconds, including time for taking a deep breath at the start.
Google gained a talented guy who was much too good for CV.”
Somebody, apparently at Classified Ventures, wrote an anonymous comment regarding Sam Sebastian’s move to Google Local. I don’t like anonymous notes, and/or personal attacks. But here is the gist of the comment:
“Sure Sebastian could out every classified initiative at CV, but the details aren’t that hard to divine….Uh, aggregate newspaper classifieds and leverage national online brands.”
Can CV’s classified initiatives really be so easily summed up? Is the danger of Sebastian’s spilling the CV “playbook” to Google as relatively unimportant as Johnny Damon spilling last season’s Red Sox playbook to the Yankees?
I used to work at CV, and you had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that stated you wouldn’t company secrets once you left. Don’t know if Sam had to sign the same thing, but it’s likely.