Ngmoco names TV veteran as chief operating officer

Mobile gaming firm Ngmoco has named a TV executive as its new chief operating officer. The move positions Ngmoco to offer broader entertainment on its mobile social gaming network.

The San Francisco company named Joanna Drake Earl, former chief strategy officer and chief operating officer at Al Gore’s media startup Current TV, as head of day-to-day operations at Ngmoco. Her job will include driving the launch of Mobage, which is Ngmoco’s global mobile entertainment network.

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Ngmoco has been primarily a developer and publisher of mobile games. But it was purchased last year by Japan’s mobile gaming network DeNA and focused on making DeNA’s Mobage mobile social network into a global service. In Japan, DeNA makes money not only from mobile games but from other forms of entertainment as well.

In the rest of the world, Ngmoco has launched an English version of Mobage as a beta test, and it plans to bring all sorts of entertainment to the network, not just games. That’s where Drake Earl’s expertise comes in. Neil Young, chief executive of Ngmoco, said that Drake Earl’s expertise at the “crossroads of media and technology” was valuable to Ngmoco. Drake Earl said in a statement, “Games are only the beginning.”

Before joining Current TV, Drake Earl held executive jobs at Moxi and ReacTV.