Jason Oberfest

Current

• VP Social Applications at ngmoco:)

Past

• SVP, Business Development and GM, Open Platform at MySpace
• VP, Business Development at MySpace
• Managing Director, Product Management and Business Development at Los Angeles Times Interactive

• VP Client Strategy, VP Strategic Planning at Blast Radius (http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/blastradius/)

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Websites

• Twitter

Jason Oberfest’s Summary

I like to build developer platforms, run large scale web operations and work with great teams. Recently worked with Zynga, Playdom, Playfish, RockYou, Flixster and other key partners to launch the MySpace Open Platform and grow the business to over 30 million monthly active users.

Past Speaking Engagements:

South by Southwest, TieCon, Stanford University, Social Gaming Summit, Silicon Valley Microfinance 2.0 Summit, GamesBeat, Digital Hollywood, SNAP Summit, OMMA Global, Engage Expo, Under the Radar, AdWeek DC.

References in Publications:

New York Times, TechCrunch, Mashable, Washington Post, PaidContent, Wall St Journal, BusinessWeek, Variety, CNET.

Jason Oberfest’s Specialties:

* managing large P&Ls
* building and monetizing open developer platforms
* structuring and negotiating content and technology deals
* product development using user-centered design, open source software and agile methodologies

Jason Oberfest’s Experience

• VP Social Applications

  ngmoco:)

  (Privately Held; Animation industry)

  September 2009 — Present (3 months)

  I help bring ngmoco:) products to social networks and the web and develop and discover social games that can be adapted to iPhone and mobile devices.

• SVP, Business Development and GM, Open Platform

  MySpace

  (Public Company; NWS; Internet industry)

  January 2009 — September 2009 (9 months)

  * Board of Directors, OpenSocial Foundation
  
  * Status update synch with Twitter (PaidContent: http://bit.ly/17RNWd)
  
  * Launch of user activity streams, MySpace placement on Yahoo! homepage (Mashable: http://bit.ly/12stPT)
  
  * MySpace app developer Playdom reports 20 million monthly users on the MySpace application platform (http://bit.ly/15QwRs, VentureBeat: http://bit.ly/E2wxa)
  
  * Content licensing and revenue share agreement with Citysearch (TechCrunch: http://bit.ly/dH3rU; ReadWriteWeb: http://bit.ly/2B2NON)
  
  * MySpace on connected TVs (WSJ: http://bit.ly/2GAMka)
  
  * Growth of Offerpal on the MySpace Platform (Inside Facebook: http://bit.ly/Mnxf)
  
  * Launch of MySpace offsite APIs (Mashable: http://bit.ly/VOIv2)

• VP, Business Development

  MySpace

  (Public Company; 201-500 employees; NWS; Internet industry)

  February 2008 — January 2009 (1 year )

• Managing Director, Product Management and Business Development

  Los Angeles Times Interactive

  (Partnership; Newspapers industry)

  May 2005 — February 2008 (2 years 10 months)

  * Launched first phase redesign of latimes.com which generated enough incremental ad revenue to cover the Times's entire editorial payroll, print and online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/12/la-times-online-advertising
  
  * Developed social news platform using Ruby, Lucene Java and Alfresco open source content management software
  
  * Created new entertainment industry awards franchise The Envelope (http://theenvelope.com)
  
  * Increased online travel section page views 298% following the launch of a new product, with national advertising dollars moving from a 26% YOY decline to a 156% YOY increase
  
  Identified, structured, and negotiated partnerships including:
  
  * Mixx.com- strategic marketing and distribution deal
  -www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/04/la-times-takes-a-stake-in-mixx/
  -www.venturebeat.com/2007/12/04/la-times-invests-in-mixx-integrates-social-news-site/
  
  * Aggregate Knowledge- software licensing agreement and product development collaboration with Kleiner Perkins backed startup -http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071129/20071129005078.html?.v=1
  
  * Expedia- agreement to include real time travel deals and booking capability in new travel section (http://travel.latimes.com)
  
  * Netvibes.com- strategic marketing and distribution deal
  -http://tinyurl.com/2m7rqp
  
  * Eventful.com- data licensing agreement providing event data via the Eventful API
  
  * Gold Derby- feature, license, and publicity agreement with academy awards expert Tom O’Neil covering editorial content, publicity appearances on network tv and rights to online academy awards forums

• VP Client Strategy, VP Strategic Planning

  Blast Radius (http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/blastradius/)

  (Internet industry)

  October 1999 — April 2005 (5 years 7 months)

  * Joined Blast Radius as 31st employee. Served as member of the senior management team and helped grow the company to 300 employees on bootstrapped operating model (growth funded entirely from operating profit with no outside funding). Blast Radius was acquired by the WPP Group in 2007.
  
  * Developed media and commerce websites for Sony, Nintendo, Viacom, A&E and other clients
  
  * Worked with AOL from 2002-2005 developing AOL Shopping, AOL Search, AOL.com, and other products
  
  AOL Search:
  http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3553681
  http://websearch.about.com/od/enginesanddirectories/a/aol_search.htm
  
  AOL Shopping:
  (Designs: http://bit.ly/dBMb)
  
  AOL Travel Search (kayak.com back end):
  (Designs: http://bit.ly/WlU8)

Additional Information

Jason Oberfest’s Websites:

• Twitter

Jason Oberfest’s Groups:

Creative Good: Customer Experience Council

•    Fans of Mashable