AOL names Stephane Panier head of Bebo’s global operations, responsible for scaling the social media network’s operations, advancing its global reach, and delivering an exemplary user experience to the company’s 24 million global consumers. Panier was previously VP and COO of Bebo. In his new role, Panier will report directly to Jon Brod, Executive Vice President, AOL Ventures.

“The past nine months have seen us create and deliver a more relevant and open social experience for our users across both new and existing markets, and I look forward to building on this foundation,” said Stephane Panier.

“He is the ideal leader to build on Bebo’s existing successes, to chart a course for its future, and to execute against that vision.” said Jon Brod, Executive Vice President, AOL Ventures.

Panier has more than a decade’s experience spanning finance, operations and strategic consultancy. He has led talented teams of professionals for several of the world’s most established and innovative companies across the U.S. and Europe. Before joining Bebo in January 2009, Panier worked for Google for six years in both senior Finance and Operations positions. He first joined the Strategic Partnership team in Mountain View, where he provided financial, analytical, strategic and operational support to the fast-growing Adsense business. After two years, he moved to London to build and lead the Financial Planning team in EMEA before returning to Mountain View for a further two years to build the company’s Product and Engineering Finance team.

Prior to Google, Panier was a management consultant with Booz & Company, focusing on energy and hi-tech. He worked with a variety of clients ranging from utilities and large tech companies to start-ups. His early career was played out at Areva, the French leader in design and construction of nuclear power plants where he spent five years rapidly advancing and diversifying his career. His first year was spent as a design engineer at Areva’s U.S. subsidiary in Lynchburg, Va. He then returned to France to complete his Test Engineer training, before going on to lead commissioning teams in nuclear power plants in both France and China.

Bebo is a popular social networking site that combines community, self-expression and entertainment, enabling its users to consume, create, discover, curate and share digital content in entirely new ways. It is a social experience, which through its lifestream platform affords users a simple way to connect and keep up with everyone and everything they care about, irrespective of which medium they use or where the activity takes place, be it on other sites such as: YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace.

Bebo is currently optimised for 13 different countries across the globe, including the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India and the Netherlands.