Shawn Morton

Experienced web product manager, social media strategist, professional blogger and speaker, startup entrepreneur & father of 4

Professional:

Shawn has over 11 years of web product development experience. He spent the past 9 years at CNET Networks where he focused on large-scale community and social media initiatives. He has also done user experience and usability consulting projects for companies including Office Depot, Yahoo! Shopping, Sony, HCA Healthcare and Kemper Insurance.

Beginning in July 2008, Shawn will be leading the social media strategy for Nationwide in Columbus, OH.

In his spare time while at CNET, Shawn co-founded Aggregated Media which created a social media technology platform for lifestreaming, social media aggregation and social search applications. A prototype of the AM platform can be seen at Profilactic.com. Profilactic consolidates all of the social media content that you and your friends create online.

In addition to his work on the web, Shawn is a professional writer, blogger and speaker. He has written articles on web development and personal technology for CNET's TechRepublic and Builder.com and was the editor of TechRepublic's consumer electronics blog Practical Gadgetry. He has maintained a personal blog since 2004.

Other writing and press credits include an appearance on NPR's "State of Affairs" to give an introduction to blogging, an interview with Online Community Report on social media trends, a ZDNet video introduction to tagging, a WIRED interview on Netflix and, most recently, Shawn's insights were included in Jeremiah Owyang's Forrester report on "Online Community Best Practices."

Prior to relocating to Columbus, Shawn was very active in the Louisville social media and startup community and participated in Social Media Club, Forge Louisville and the Louisville Twitter Meetup which he co-founded.

Personal:

Shawn currently lives in Louisville, KY with his wife (Amy) and his 4 children: Mahlon (10), Miles (7), Mira (4) and Maddox (1), but will be relocating to Columbus, OH at the end of July 2008.

Aside from spending time with his family, he enjoys tinkering with technology and playing video games.

Shawn grew up in Charleston, WV and attended South Charleston High School (Class of '89). He got a B.A. from Marshall University in Journalism and Advertising (Class of '93). He received an M.A. in Film & Video Production from the University of Memphis (Class of '97).

Shawn doesn't really like referring to himself in the third person, but does it anyway.

Contact info:

Shawn is available for speaking engagements and Guitar Hero lessons. Contact him at: smorty71 at gmail dot com or 502-442-2309