Kate Burns, one of Google's first employees outside the US and its first UK managing director, has been hired to run the British operation of YouTube competitor Dailymotion.

Burns, who joins as the first UK managing director of Dailymotion, has the job of increasing the online video website's user numbers, the amount of user-generated and official content uploaded, and boosting revenues.

She will report to the Dailymotion chief executive, Mark Zaleski, who was appointed last July and is based in Paris. Zaleski was previously chief executive of auction website QXL Ricardo.

Burns, who joined Google in 2001 and rose to become its managing director for the UK, Ireland and the Benelux countries, was previously involved in launching Doubleclick and search engine Altavista into the UK. She has also worked at Yahoo.

"Kate Burns was an obvious choice for Dailymotion because of her track record in launching three global online organisations into the UK market and taking them to become successful public companies," Zaleski said.

"She will develop the best entertainment experience for customers as well as the best business experience for our commercial partners."

Top of Burns' inbox is to recruit an account management team and further programmers and entertainment developers for Dailymotion's UK operation.

She will also set about building an advertising sales operation and creating commercial partnerships with brands and advertising agencies.

"I will raise brand awareness so that we can attract more 'Motionmakers' to upload their work and increase our footprint in the UK," said Burns.

"I'm keen to talk to brands about these new ways to reach and approach consumers and create new opportunities for through-the-line interaction."

Burns left Google last summer and in the interim has consulted for a number of companies including digital advertising networks Adlink and buy.at.

Prior to joining Google in 2001 she was pan-European sales director for Altavista and before that spent three years at Doubleclick, which is now owned by Google, as its first UK sales executive.

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