Linden Lab Appoints Tom Hale as Chief Product Officer

Former Adobe Systems and Macromedia Executive to Join Senior Leadership Team of Linden Lab

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced the appointment of Tom Hale as Chief Product Officer. Hale brings over 15 years of experience in product development, marketing and management, having most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe Systems. Reporting to Linden Lab’s CEO, Mark Kingdon, Hale will be responsible for driving the product strategy and business for Second Life.

“Linden Lab has a tremendous opportunity to redefine the way people create, connect, play, work and learn”

“Tom brings deep experience at every stage of the product lifecycle – from creating, launching and marketing great products to building large businesses around them,” said Mark Kingdon, CEO, Linden Lab. “Second Life is made up of an unusually complex array of products, and few executives have the range required to craft and execute a product strategy for such a rich, vibrant and diverse experience. Tom does. He will play a pivotal role in taking Second Life to the next level and will be a great partner for me.”

“Linden Lab has a tremendous opportunity to redefine the way people create, connect, play, work and learn,” Hale said. “I’m incredibly excited to join a leadership team that can bring the future of social computing to a broad audience and build a great business.”

Prior to Linden Lab, Hale was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR) at Redpoint Ventures, investigating the intersections of gaming, virtual goods and virtual worlds, online communications, community and social networking. At Adobe, Hale led the collaboration and Software as a Service (SaaS) agendas, driving the strategy for businesses such as Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Connect (formerly known as Macromedia Breeze), and the Flash Media Server after the acquisition of Macromedia. At Macromedia, Hale held a wide range of senior management roles and was instrumental in making Macromedia products standard for web development, establishing the Flash Player as a platform for rich internet applications (RIAs), and building a $100 million a year business in the learning and training space.

Hale holds a bachelors degree from Harvard University.

About The Second Life Grid and Linden Lab

Consisting of a series of sophisticated content creation, land management and transactional tools, the Second Life Grid is the technology platform used to power the acclaimed 3D online world of Second Life. Created by Linden Lab, the Second Life Grid platform enables individuals, educators, researchers and businesses of all sizes to develop their own public or private virtual world environments. Inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Residents across the globe, the Second Life virtual world has a fully functioning economy and empowers its users to create content, start businesses, interact with others, collaborate and educate.

Linden Lab was founded in 1999 by Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale and is headquartered in San Francisco. The company is led by CEO Mark Kingdon, the former CEO of Organic, Inc., and counts noted software pioneer Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, among its board members.