occasional thoughts by john borthwick
This is a blog with occasional postings from John Borthwick. I work in the technology, communications and media space — as an entrepreneur, a builder and an investor. My interests are in building great companies — and in the process understanding about how media evolves as it collides with real time conversations. This blog contains occasional thoughts, it is not a high frequency blog. I like to write to organize my thinking on a particular issue. This blog is often a repository for that thinking. Thus the name and the sporadic attention. My twitter or tumblr stream are more reflective of day to day thinking.
The companies I am working with are listed on the betaworks site. Prior to launching betaworks I was CEO of Fotolog. In November of 2007 we sold Fotolog to Hi Media. Prior to Fotolog I was Snr. VP of Technology and Alliances at Time Warner. I arrived at Time Warner — AOL in fact — in early 1997 when they acquired the company I had started way back in 1994. The company was WP Studio, producer of three sites: Total New York (one of the first local city guides, now gone), äda ‘web and spanker (a pre blog, daily journal of the occasionally twisted mind of Carter Adamson).
Companies with whom I have worked with outside of betaworks, Time Warner and AOL include: Blogger, Fotolog, Return Path, Daylife, Social Science, MyWebOS , Divmod and Lending Tree. I also sit on the board and/or act as an adviser to: Center for Independent Media, Coburn Ventures, Rhizome and HRW.
This web log is published on WordPress.