According to reports in the New York Times, it looks like the social networking site, Facebook, could be considering hiring President Obama’s former press secretary, Robert Gibb to manage its communications.
The report says that Facebook wants to speed up Gibbs move into the private sector since he had said at an earlier date that he wanted to wait to get a new job until he had helped with President Obama’s re-election campaign.
Should he take the position, the sources note that he could potentially receive millions of dollars, including not only a cash salary but pre-IPO shares. Facebook was recently valued at $85 billion on SecondMarket.
Facebook spent over $350,000 in lobbying efforts last year, an indication of how much more the company’s stake in the government’s purview of the site has risen since its founding in 2005. Internet security and privacy have both been in the spotlight over the past year as loci for increased regulation.
Apparently Gibbs has been discussing the job–to be based in Palo Alto–with some former colleagues, like David Axelrod, a former senior adviser for Obama. Gibbs has held talks with a few other companies since leaving the White House.
