Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder & CEO
Seth drives the SocialMedia Advertising Vision, is keeper of our values and ensures the team executes to our goals
Dave Gentzel, Co-Founder & VP Products
Dave invents products that capitalize on social media
Eddie Smith, VP Sales & Business Development
Eddie handles SocialMedia.com’s various sales partnerships
Farhad Massoudi, VP Engineering
Farhad leads the crack SocialMedia engineering team, providing the direction needed to keep up with the unrelenting demands of our fast-growing marketplace
Ken is a Swiss army knife that maintains finances, ensures our HR needs are met, and ensures we have a comfortable work environment
James Kelly handles all things finance. He is an experienced professional in the online advertising space.
Gedioen espouses SocialMedia.com’s benefits to consumer brands and social media publishers.
SocialMedia’s talent is comprised of people with backgrounds in online advertising, social media and technology industries. The team is bound by a passion to invent new ways of making advertising more effective within social media.
Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder & CEO
Seth Goldstein is the co-founder and CEO of SocialMedia Networks. In his role as CEO, Seth drives the strategic direction of the company, overseeing the development of technologies and services to keep SocialMedia Networks at the forefront of social media and advertising. Seth has extensive leadership experience, advising advertisers on the evolving opportunities in social media, while encouraging developer creation of lasting and interactive applications for online consumers.
An experienced entrepreneur, Seth has created a number of successful Internet businesses, including one of the first Internet advertising companies, SiteSpecific, in 1995. Seth was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Flatiron Partners from 1998 to 2000. In 2002, he co-founded Majestic Research, a next generation Wall Street research firm that provides leading hedge funds with proprietary data insights. Majestic Research was founded on the premise that vigilant analysis of online behavior would lead to better investment research. In 2005, he created Root Markets, the first financial exchange marketplace for Internet mortgage leads.
Seth is also an angel advisor to a number of Web services companies including Aggregate Knowledge, Lijit and Downfly. He was the first investor in Web 2.0 pioneer del.icio.us (now part of Yahoo!).
In addition to Seth’s entrepreneurial efforts, he is also an active member on the speaking circuit, considered the de facto expert on social media. Providing insight for both advertisers and developers, Seth is often asked for his thoughts on best practices, emerging trends and the future of the social media landscape. He contributed his expertise to articles in the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, offering the inside scoop on monetizing social media, connecting advertisers with developers and the importance of social network applications as part of multi-channel advertising campaigns.
Dave Gentzel, Co-Founder and VP Products
Dave Gentzel is co-founder and vice president of product development of SocialMedia Networks. Building compelling Web applications for over 10 years, Dave is the resident expert on what makes a successful social media application. Dave developed the extremely popular Facebook applications FoodFight and HappyHour, which have each attracted over three million users. Dave oversees and guides the strategic and creative product development at SocialMedia Networks.
In 2006, Dave’s creation of the widget Trakzor for MySpace, which enables users to monitor visitors to their profile pages, attracted 3.5 millions users and 40 million pageviews per month. Dave was immediately brought on board at SocialMedia Networks when the Facebook platform opened to developers, and continues to educate developers on how to make the most successful applications for advertisers.
True to his entrepreneurial spirit, Dave has been actively building online business ventures since the age of 15. In 1998, he launched the Trintium Gaming Network, a Web hosting and advertising agency serving video game and entertainment Web sites, which delivered over 100 million hits to fans worldwide.
Dave graduated summa cum laude from at Virginia Tech with a B.S. in business information technology.
Eddie Smith, VP of Sales and Business Development
Eddie Smith is the vice president of sales and business development at SocialMedia Networks. Eddie is responsible for creating the strategy, tactics and programs geared to position SocialMedia Networks as the leading online social advertising platform. He is an experienced business development professional who has successfully built businesses within the online advertising industry. Eddie plans, organizes and manages the marketing functions required to achieve growth, profitability and visibility while maintaining brand message continuity worldwide.
Prior to his work at SocialMedia Networks, Eddie was the vice president of digital marketing at WebTrends, which acquired his previous company, ClickShift. He has significant expertise marketing and selling into Internet Retailer Top 100 advertisers along with the world’s largest digital advertising agencies. He’s worked with online and offline acquisition channels including paid search, display advertising, email marketing, direct mail and other offline mediums.
Eddie’s prior professional engagements include NextTag, USADATA, DoubleClick and Reuters Marketing Information. Shortly after graduating from college, he also founded Communications Concepts, a media consulting firm providing media research and market analyses to agencies and advertisers. He holds a B.A. in advertising and master’s degree in marketing communications from Florida State University.
Farhad Massoudi, VP of Engineering
Farhad Massoudi is vice president of engineering at SocialMedia Networks. Under his tireless leadership, our software and design teams have expanded our advertising network to a growing list of social networking platforms, putting in place innovative features that help advertisers achieve better results while enabling publishers to monetize their applications.
Previously, Farhad was at Yahoo where he was a key architect of Yahoo Personals’ new search platform. He was also a software developer at Intel and Scientific Software.
Farhad received his BS in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley.
Ken Thom, VP of Operations
Ken Thom is vice president of operations at SocialMedia Networks. Ken is responsible for the ongoing establishment and execution of all key business functions for growth as the largest leading advertising platform for social networks. Ken’s specialties include product and people operations, accounting, finance contracts and key legal and business relationships.
Ken has over 15 years of experience working with leading technology companies and Internet startups. He has held a number of product management and operations roles at renowned Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, where he helped launch Firewire.
Most recently, Ken acted as chief product officer at Unboggle, a web-based service set to launch in April ’08. Ken offered a consulting role focused on product and marketing areas, primarily helping the company with product feature definition, development and release. He assisted with market research and the product launch plan to gain visibility with potential end users, investors and hi-tech influencers.
Ken was also the co-founder and vice president of products of Vazu Inc., a free, ad-based service for mobile phones enabling the transfer of text, images and music from the web or desktop with one click.
Graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Ken went on to receive his Masters in the field from Stanford University.
James Kelly, VP Finance
James Kelly is responsible for all aspects of the finance and accounting function at Social Media. He is an experienced professional in the online advertising space.
Prior to his work at Social Media Networks, James was the CFO at Skyrider, a development stage startup focused on monetizing P2P networks. Prior to Skyrider, James served for six years at Cisco Systems on teams responsible for M&A, Strategic Planning and Tech Group Finance. Prior to Cisco, James served for four years at Deloitte & Touche in their audit practice, where he earned his CPA. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from University of California, Los Angeles.
Gedioen Aloula, VP Marketing
Gedioen Aloula is vice president of marketing at SocialMedia Networks. He is responsible for communicating the benefits of the company and its products to consumer brands and social media publishers. Gedioen was previously a brand manager with Procter and Gamble, where he spent five years, most recently managing the Old Spice Body Wash business. He graduated from Stanford with a degree in Economics.