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YouTube Gets a New Product Guru From Zynga

Manuel Bronstein runs the video site’s consumer products group. He should be busy.

aliisik / Shutterstock
Peter Kafka
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

YouTube, which has seen a series of high-profile managers leave in the last year, has brought some new talent into the company: The video site has hired Zynga executive Manuel Bronstein to run its consumer products group.

Bronstein essentially fills a vacancy created in August, when consumer product head Shiva Rajaraman left to work for Spotify. Bronstein, who had headed up product at Zynga from 2011 until this summer, announced his move via Twitter. YouTube reps declined to comment.

Bronstein’s new job means he will oversee “viewer-facing products,” which presumably includes the music subscription service that YouTube has said it still plans to launch this year as well as other subscription offerings that YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki says she wants to sell.

Wojcicki hasn’t announced a replacement for Shishir Mehrotra, who had overseen product for all of YouTube and who left earlier this year. He is one of several executives who has left since Wojcicki started running YouTube in February.

It’s worth noting that Bronstein’s gaming background extends beyond Zynga. He has also spent time working on Microsoft’s Xbox, including a stint overseeing 1 vs. 100, a massive interactive quiz show. Wojcicki has signaled an interest in expanding YouTube’s presence in gaming, most notably by trying to buy Twitch, the live gaming network that Amazon bought earlier this year.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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