Former AOL Exec Bob Lord Joins IBM

Bob Lord, an exec late of AOL and Razorfish, has been named chief digital officer of IBM.

David Kenny, GM of  IBM Watson and former chairman and CEO of The Weather Company, announced it on Twitter Sunday. "Thrilled to be working with @rwlord again. He will be a great chief digital officer at @IBM," Kenny said. 

Lord’s LinkedIn profile also makes note of his new slot at Big Blue, and Lord confirmed as much on Twitter.

Lord is coming on board amid some recent acquisitions by IBM that enhance its position in the areas of Big Data and digital video distribution.

In January, IBM closed its acquisition of The Weather Company’s business-to-business, mobile and cloud-based web properties (including weather.com and Weather Underground), The Weather Company brand, and WSI, its global business-to-business brand.

On the heels of IBM’s acquisition of Clearleap, a multiscreen video platform specialist, last year, it also snapped up Ustream, a provider of cloud-driven live video streaming services that counts HBO, the National Football League and Discovery Channel, NASA, and Facebook among its clients.

According to Re/code, news of Lord’s hire was announced internally on Friday (April 1) in a statement noting that Lord will “accelerate and scale all aspects of IBM’s digital presence, operations and ecosystem,” and be in charge of IBM’s digital platform and digital sales.