Startup: IMO Entertainment (I'm a founder)

Description: The key social element of the IMO platform was the Friend Bar. Lying on the bottom of the player, it is oh so clever behind the scenes to deliver just the social info you want when you need it. It knows which friends to show, whether they're on or offline, their current status (e.g. Listening to "Coldplay"), and lots more. It's also built to be addictive, entertaining, and gamelike, to promote friends. Everyone can create a custom avatar and enact real-time, highly interactive pranks on friends (we called them pwns), ranging from nice interactions like sending flowers, to encasing someone in ice and having them slowly thaw out. The virtual goods marketplace for these items was tied into the larger virtual currency model.

We designed the friend bar technology to broadcast interactions to connected nodes of the social graph. This means that as a user updated their avatar or pwned another user, all connected friends would see the interaction in realtime.

Role: Co-founder and EVP of Creative & UX at IMO. Hands-on leader for brand, creative, and experience. Shared product vision and management of a 15-person technical and design team.