Ned Desmond

Current

• President at Time Inc. Interactive

Past

• President and Editor at Business 2.0
• vice president at Infoseek.com
• senior correspondent at Fortune

4 more...

Education

• University of Oxford
• Tufts University - The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
• Amherst College

Recommended

1 person has recommended Ned

Connections

374 connections

Industry

Online Media

Ned Desmond’s Summary

I started out in journalism in local Massachusetts newspapers and eventually went on to serve as the Time magazine bureau chief in New Delhi (1988-91) and later Tokyo (1992-1996).

In 1996, I left Time to pursue my interest in the Internet and moved to Silicon Valley. I joined Infoseek in 1996 and founded the Infoseek subsidiary in Japan with joint-venture partner Digital Garage. I left briefly to return to writing at Fortune magazine and then returned to Infoseek about the time Disney acquired the company to form Go.com. I led the teams that built out the news, sports, personal finance and other channels for the Go.com portal. Eighteen months later I returned to Time Inc. to start a new monthly business magazine and web site called eCompany Now, which later acquired and merged with Business 2.0.

After three years leading both the business and editorial sides of that company, I shifted from San Francisco to New York to run Time Inc. Interactive (TII), a central group at Time Inc. charged with corporate digital strategy. That was 2003, and TII’s assignment was to oversee a deal that assigned most of Time Inc.’s Web assets to AOL and restricted access to magazine subscribers and AOL members. During the three years of that AOL deal, TII re-built many of its key sites to emphasize Web-only, high-quality programming. In 2006 Time Inc. amended the AOL strategy and re-launched its sites in a free, ad-supported model. TII continues to re-build online businesses for Time Inc. as well as manage central services for web technology, ad operations, audience development, mobile strategy and product design.

As of January 2008, Time Inc’s fast-growing sites reach more than 26 million consumers (Nielsen/NetRatings) and do more than 2 billion page views (Ominuture), and we are expanding quickly into video and social media.

Ned Desmond’s Specialties:

Online media product development and delivery. Audience development. Media strategy. Print to online media transformation.

Additional Information

Ned Desmond’s Groups:

Former Member of the Board, The Churchill Club, Silicon Valley, 2002
Former Member of the Board, Hoovers.com, 2002
Member of the Board, Internet Advertising Association
Member of the Board, Online Publishing association
Member of the Board, New York University Graduate Program in Publishing

•    Web Analytics Association member
•    Amherst College Alumni member
•    Time Inc. member
•    Ex-Infoseek member

Ned Desmond’s Honors:

Member of MIN Digital Hall of Fame (2006)