Facebook added to its rapidly growing communications team with the hire of former television news producer Jennifer Yuille, who will be based in New York.

Mike Allen’s POLITICO Playbook had the details Friday morning:

She will be leading consumer media efforts. She’ll…be spending time in Palo Alto. She starts at the end of July.

According to her bio, Yuille is an award-winning journalist who has produced for CBS, MSNBC, and CNN. Last year, she left the CBS Evening News, as the producer for Katie Couric, to join Silicon Valley startup Polyvore. She graduated from the University of Michigan, where she majored in communications and Japanese.

This move continues the flurry of hiring activity in the communications department at the social networking site.  Over the weekend, we shared the news that Sarah Feinberg, former assistant to President Barack Obama, was joining the Palo Alto team in California. Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, who was named vice president of corporate communications last month, also worked for NBC in Washington. Most if not all of the recent public relations hires share backgrounds in politics and national news media.

As the company continues to grow and it faces the usual pressures from competitors, regulators, politicians, and the like, Facebook will need professionals schooled in crisis communications and rapid response to react to a 24/7 news cycle.

Readers: What do you think of Facebook’s overall communications efforts? Any ideas for improvement?

Last week Katie Couric decided to ask Facebook users about their thoughts on Obama’s first 100 days in office. The reward for users? The possibility of having their video clip used in a live webcast on Wednesday. There has been a decent response so far, with around 20 – 25 submissions in the past day. I took the time to watch some of the responses, many of which are pretty entertaining (I’ve included a video of the responses below).

This isn’t the first time that internet users have been asked to voice their political opinions. Back in 2007, the first YouTube debates were held and in 2008 the first ever Facebook Debates took place. Both events were a step toward real-time interaction with the audience although there is still a filtering process to ensure offensive content doesn’t get on air.
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