Tuesday, April 30, 2013

FIR Interview: Eric Wahlforss, Co-Founder and CTO, SoundCloud

SoundCloudSoundCloud‘s co-founder Eric Wahlforss sees his company as a social network, with its primary competitors Facebook and Twitter, two of the giants of today’s social web.

Its Wikipedia entry describes SoundCloud as an online audio distribution platform that allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings by users. It was founded in 2008 and now has more than 20 million users worldwide, with membership growing by over 1.5 million every month.

In this FIR Interview, co-host Neville Hobson met with Eric Wahlforss during the FT Digital Media Conference 2013 in London on April 26, to talk about audio and business.

Their conversation ranged wide, covering topics such as the developing competitive marketplace today and where SoundCloud fits into the social web, introducing new products aimed at business users to run brand campaigns, podcasting and how SoundCloud can be a great platform for podcasters, the future for SoundCloud and audio’s role in a strategic approach to social media.

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About our Conversation Partner

Eric WahlforssEric Wahlforss is founder and CTO of SoundCloud, a social sound platform that gives users unprecedented access to the world’s largest community of music and audio creators.

Frustrated by not being able to share sound files easily over the Internet, Eric along with CEO and co-founder Alexander Ljung, decided to build a truly open platform for audio creators. In his role as CTO, Eric leads the technical development and vision of SoundCloud, including driving usage of its open API by third-party developers. Creators on SoundCloud now post over 10 hours of music and audio every minute; the platform reaches over 180 million people, equating to 8% of the entire internet population, every month.

Eric’s main area of interest is in emerging web technologies and their applications. Prior to starting SoundCloud he co-founded web consultancy network Strategy & Interaction and co-authored a book on trust in online social spaces. His experience also includes work as an interaction designer for location-based services company, gate5.

Eric is based in Berlin and is also known as electronic music artist Forss.

Connect with Eric on Twitter: @ericw. And, of course, on SoundCloud.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by neville on 04/30 at 12:31 AM
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