NEW YORK – Facebook is in talks to hire President Obama’s former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs for a senior communications role, the New York Times reported.
The talks come as Facebook has increasingly been in the public eye, in part also thanks to movie The Social Network, and regulators have looked at it amid privacy concerns. The company is also looking to expand its communications team ahead of an IPO likely to happen in early 2012, the Times said.
Gibbs would work under Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vp for global communications, marketing and public policy who joined the company from Google in 2008.
Gibbs, who left the White House in February after two years, and a spokesman for Facebook declined to comment, the paper said. Talks are at an early stage, it cited sources as saying.
The Times said Gibbs was planning to help set up President Obama’s re-election campaign before taking a private sector job, but Facebook is pressing him to consider the job more quickly.
Details of his possible pay package have not been discussed, but the paper said he would receive a cash salary and company shares ahead of the IPO, which could be the largest in history given that Facebook has recently been valued at as much as $65 billion.
