During his years as a foreign correspondent, one of Peter Gumbel’s assignments as a Wall Street Journal reporter was to cover a revolution in Russia. Now he wants to be part of one.

Gumbel, the Journal’s bureau chief in Los Angeles, will soon get his chance. He recently was named editor-in-chief of Business.com, a business-to-business Web site that is just one of the startups being developed by eCompanies the high-profile incubator started last year by EarthLink Network founder Sky Dayton and former Walt Disney Co. executive Jake Winebaum.

“The Internet is changing so much. It is truly a revolution, and the way it is affecting business is revolutionary,” Gumbel said.

Gumbel, who has worked at the paper for 16 years, will be in charge of all content on the site but what that content will be remains a mystery.

“In hiring Peter, what we will have is a voice for the site, which I think is very important in Web sites and often ignored,” Winebaum said.

Business.com, based in Santa Monica, won’t be launched for several months, but it has already been shaking up the Web world. In November, eCompanies broke all records by paying $7.5 million to purchase the Business.com domain name from Marc Ostrofsky, a Houston-based media entrepreneur.

Winebaum, acting chief executive for Business.com through its launch date, said in the next few weeks he will be making more senior staff announcements, but won’t disclose how many staffers will be hired.

He was also tight-lipped about what form Business.com would take and how it would differ from other business-to-business sites. “We are not ready to disclose what it is,” he said, noting that his staff has been working for the past four to five months to shape the startup.

Gumbel, 41, has been the Los Angeles bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal for four years. Before arriving in L.A. in 1996, he was chief of the Journal’s bureaus in Berlin, Paris and Moscow, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This isn’t the first time eCompanies has snagged a high-profile manager for one of its ventures. Last October, eCompanies announced that Mattel Media President David Haddad would become chief executive of eParties.com, a new Web site that helps people plan parties and events.