Vanessa Kwan joins Federated Media as a Senior Manager in Ad Operations. Vanessa has almost ten years of experience in ad operations and has held numerous positions in media companies such as CNET, Ask Jeeves and recently at Bebo/AOL.
In her spare time, Vanessa enjoys spending time with her family and traveling. She lives in the East Bay with her husband and 11-month old son Zach. Welcome to the FM family, Vanessa!
We are proud to announce a new joint venture called ReadWriteCloud. Hosted by the tech experts at ReadWriteWeb, and sponsored by Intel and VMware, ReadWriteCloud is a new central resource for the tech community to get and share information about virtualization and cloud computing.
If you’re in the biz, you know that “the cloud” has been a buzzword for some time. Some say full of promise. Some say it’s overhyped. Some say it’s a sea-change in the way the world interacts with technology.
This channel is dedicated to these questions and others including the business and strategic implications they hold for you and your business. Check it out! [link]
Via ReadWriteCloud:
ReadWriteCloud aims to combine knowledgeable editorial and active community involvement around virtualization and cloud computing. We hope it will become the best source available for IT managers who want honest discussion and practical solutions on these topics. Its editorial focus is not on specific products – but on ideas, innovative solutions and new ways of thinking for cloud computing and virtualization.
Back in early 2005, FM was nothing more than a good idea. It took Andre Torrez to make it a reality. In a cramped garage in Southern Marin, Andre and I sketched out a technology platform on a small whiteboard. Andre put on his headphones, bent over his keyboard, and built what has become the core of FM’s offerings to both marketers and publishers. Over the last four years, he’s managed to turn a small team of tech geniuses into a large department responsible for nothing less than the success of the company.
Now Andre is striking out on his own. He has ideas on top of ideas and we can’t wait to see them come to life. With that, we want to send Andre off with the most heart-felt of farewells – though we won’t be saying goodbye entirely. FM is a hard habit to break and Andre’s expertise is difficult to replace, so Andre will be consulting with us during his transition and on an ongoing basis. Andre, we wish you the best of luck in everything you do, though you hardly need it. Thank you for everything, it has been an honor working with you.
Now, onto the “enthusiastic welcome” part: Amy Yeh has joined FM as our new Chief Product Officer. Here’s the official press release. Amy is a technology executive with nearly a decade of cutting-edge online experience, most recently with News Corp’s STAR TV and Fox Interactive. Her career has centered on developing technology products, strategies and solutions for large media organizations. With software development and technical management of both small teams and large organizations, Yeh will bring even more vision, innovation and expertise to an already-talented team of media technology professionals (the very same team that Andre built from the ground up).
FM managed to grow through 2009, even during such a challenging economic slump that saw the demise of many a media property. We’re quite proud of that accomplishment. We’ve managed to come out a stronger, more focused company ready for its next evolution. We are doubling down on our technology platform, bringing more sites into the FM family, working with new marketers, deepening relationships with existing partners, and creating new products that will maximize the opportunities for both our publishers and our marketers. Amy has her work cut out for her! Welcome, Amy. We are so happy to have you aboard!
Federated Media welcomes Bryon LaBumbard as Director of Sales in New York. Prior to FM, Bryon was Director of Sales at BuzzLogic where he was overseeing both the Sales and Account Management teams in San Francisco and New York. Before that, Bryon spent over 9 years at Yahoo! HotJobs working in a number of different Sales and Sales Management roles. Bryon is excited to bring his experience to FM’s talented sales organization and continue to build strategic programs that help brands leverage conversational media to grow their business.
Bryon moved to NYC with his wife Lauren in January 2009 after spending 10 years in San Francisco. Originally from Michigan, Bryon holds a BA in Accounting from Michigan State University and loves his Spartans.
Michael Sondak joins Federated Media as an Account Executive after spending the last three and a half years at Digitas, most recently as a media supervisor. At Digitas he worked on the GameTap and American Express Paid Search and Display marketing campaigns where he focused specifically on acquisition marketing, supporting the OPEN, Gift Card, Consumer Travel and Personal Savings teams.
During his most recent planning cycles, Michael grew to recognize the increasing importance of reaching influencers who are vocal within and outside their micro-communities. He joins FM eager to work with marketers and develop breakthrough solutions to engage these passionate individuals.
Outside of the office, Michael enjoys skiing, golf, the New York Rangers and discovering craft beers.
We’ve just launched the WEPC Vault. Over the next two weeks, you’re invited to participate in unlocking the ASUS Lab, an experience in which you’ll solve fun puzzles to reveal images and video clips showcasing ASUS next generation PC notebooks.
Get started with the first week’s challenge—and find out if your ideas made the cut! ASUS and Intel are up to some amazing things. Get your exclusive sneak-peak here.
Hint: Think phone pad.
Federated Media has partnered with new charitable organization Summit on the Summit to help raise awareness for the global clean water crisis through Facebook Causes. Celebrities Kenna, Lupe Fiasco, Jessica Biel and a team of influencers will be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on Jan 7th to raise awareness for the clean water crisis.
The global clean water crisis is arguably the most important crisis of our time, claiming more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. A billion people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water, and a child dies every fifteen seconds of a preventable water-related disease.
SUMMIT ON THE SUMMIT: Kilimanjaro is the tallest peak in Africa. The 19,340-foot journey will be daunting and physically demanding, but it’s nothing compared to the reason they’re climbing—to help those who face a much steeper obstacle every single day.
Please do your part by joining the Facebook Cause watch the Summit on the Summit webisodes, and share with your friends. For each person that joins the Cause and for each webisode view, HP will generously donate 100 Liters of clean water to those in need.
HP, PUR and First Ascent are proud sponsors of Summit on the Summit. Funds will be raised for Children’s Safe Drinking Water, UNHCR and PlayPumps International.
At FM we often talk about how brands need to engage in real conversations with their customers. Indeed, we’ve built a significant piece of our business around helping brands do just that. At this point it has become almost accepted wisdom in our industry and we’re quite proud of the work we’ve done in this space – what we call “conversational marketing.”
Witness the high-profile success stories of brands like Dell, Starbucks, Comcast and Zappos (to name just a few) who have experienced extraordinary lifts in sales and brand sentiment due to their aggressive and honest conversational outreach.
It’s a tough thing for a brand to do when you take into consideration the volatile nature of the social media world. It’s easy enough to talk a good game when it comes to engaging with consumers, it’s a much different thing to, as they say, walk the walk.
As an example of how to do this right, I want to highlight a brief snapshot of one of our brand partners, Sun, and how they are personally getting involved in the conversation.
Last week we launched IT Innovation in partnership with TechDirt, Sun and Intel. See here for details. The idea is simple: create a community site for IT professionals, underwritten by Sun and Intel, that allows a three-way dialogue between TechDirt (the community leader), Sun/Intel (the brands) and IT pros (the consumer).
But when we say dialogue, we mean it. When Sun was presented with a critical comment from a knowledgeable consumer (see here and below quote), they didn’t hesitate to get involved in an authentic way. Not only did they respond to the consumer’s questions, they actually requested more information; to get more of the consumer’s thoughts than he had already provided. The Sun rep then left his email address and title so the consumer could get a hold of him at a later date.
The is just a single moment in time, but it is indicative of how far we’ve come from the days when brands silenced skeptics and critics at all costs. The willingness of a brand to engage in conversation with all of its constituents has truly become an asset.
Kudos to Sun for leading the way with this kind of innovative work.
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User Comment:
Sun is sponsoring? With what money?
I saw their hardware crash in value over the past 5 years. Their decision to exclude VARs from business cost everyone money. I never knew they could be a team player?
And aren’t they just waiting to be bought by someone who just wants their patents and java?
Sun Reply:
Thank you for your comments. I’m not sure what you mean by “hardware crashing in value” but I believe you’ll agree that Sun continues to deliver value to its customers with technological innovations that directly impact a customers business. A CMT based SPARC T5240 server delivers more performance than many of the highest performance systems of 5 years ago at a fraction of the cost. That is not a crash in customer value, but an increase in the performance delivered per dollar. Certainly this impacts the residual value of 5 year old systems FROM ALL MANUFACTURERS of computer equipment.
And, by continuing to invest in Solaris and expand its role as a virtualization and storage platform, Sun provides standards-based solutions with better ability to scale with system performance than most OSs. In addition, Oracle has publically stated that it will increase this investment in Solaris after the Sun acquisition is completed.* Sun has also focused on expanding the value we are delivering to our customers by offering a broad range of servers based on Intel Xeon processors.
I’d like to better understand your comment around “excluding VARs from business”. I’ve worked directly with Sun VARs for the past 5 years and over that time we’ve substantially increased the importance of VARs to Sun’s business. If there’s a specific issue related to Sun’s VAR relationship that you’d like to discuss, I’d be more than glad to help resolve it. Contact me on Twitter at JoshRey or by email at Joshua.Reynolds@Sun.com.
Prior to assuming his Account Executive role at Federated Media, Will Messmer worked at Condé Nast Digital representing brands such as Wired and Ars Technica. In expanding the business of these properties, he developed an appreciation for the value of online communities and conversational media. It’s Will’s ongoing goal to work with advertising partners to develop strategic, mutually beneficial programs that amplify the value of online brands and communities.
Will was introduced to the digital media industry while at Maxim Digital, and he received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Welcome to FM, Will!