Mark Lazen

— Bio —

I'm the CTO at Social Media Today, home of the world's best thinkers on social media.

For fifteen years, I've mashed-up content and technology to deliver great customer experiences in news, gaming, 3-D CAD, interactive television and distance learning.

A one-time writer and editor for Time Inc. and others, I made the new media leap in 1995 when I was selected to spearhead digital product development for Time-Life Books. Two years later, I was in Silicon Valley for a multi-year stint with groundbreaking consumer CAD startup Books That Work. That's where I coded my first data-driven dynamic Web sites.

In 1997 I returned to the east coast to direct online sports development for news aggregator New Century Network and later served as a product and project director for online game company Bottle Rocket. In 2000 I was brought in to the publicly traded interactive television company ACTV to direct product development on top of a massively parallel message distribution system and a browser-based operating system approach that would come to be known as AJAX. My team and our cutting edge toolkit were acquired by Harcourt Inc. in 2005, and I served as the Director of Production for all media and software in the development of a series of distance learning programs.

As a partner at Social Media Today since the company's infancy in 2008, I oversee operations, development, design and editorial strategy. Thanks to an incredible team, the company has grown from two communities to 10, and from 30,000 visits per month to 1.3 million.

When I'm not working, you can find me finger-picking a steel string guitar, or weaving through traffic on my bicycle. I live in Jersey with my wife, in a home overrun by dogs and children.