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Block.one’s Voice names Salah Zalatimo as CEO
Forbes Chief Digital Officer to helm blockchain-powered social media network.
ARLINGTON, January 9 2020 – Voice, the decentralized media network being developed by Block.one, announced today that it has appointed Forbes’ global Chief Digital Officer, Salah Zalatimo, as Chief Executive Officer, effective January 20, 2020.
In June 2019, Block.one introduced Voice with the goal of bringing integrity to social media. Learning from the successes and troubles of familiar platforms, Voice will add verified identity to encourage real content from real people and a blockchain backbone to enhance transparency and provable data integrity. Voice tokens will be rewarded for different forms of engagement, aligning the interests of users, content creators and advertisers. Voice will establish a new economic model as opposed to the traditional, where selling personal data and targeted ads come at the expense of users.
Voice is expected to launch a public beta on February 14, 2020.
Salah Zalatimo joined Forbes in 2015 after the company acquired his startup, Camerama. Over the past five years, Salah has led a successful digital transformation yielding a completely re-engineered product organization which rebuilt the Forbes platform from the ground up. The new publishing platform named Bertie, after the storied brand’s founder, integrates an AI editor that drives the effectiveness of the company’s 3000+ contributors. While overseeing Forbes’ Digital Group, the platform published over 500,000 pieces of content spanning nearly every topic area and nearly doubled its audience to over 110 million monthly users, making it a global top 100 website by traffic.
“Salah is a rare combination of product and media talent enriched by an entrepreneurial past. His experience in creating state-of-the-art content monetization and publishing tools makes him uniquely qualified to lead Voice,” said Brendan Blumer, Block.one CEO. “As users enter an era of being rewarded for their contributions to social networks, we believe it’s also important to focus on equipping creators with tools used by the world’s most successful journalists.”
“I’ve spent my entire career in digital media driving innovation by helping major content creators harness the newest technologies as competitive advantages,” said Salah. “Blockchain is becoming a clear driver of digital media product innovation, and Voice’s tokenized design presents a fundamentally better way of empowering content creators and participants; a new generation of decentralized media is on the horizon. I am delighted to be a part of this effort.”
Salah’s executive and advisory experience includes McKinsey & Co, Sony Music and The New York Times. Salah has a BA and an MBA from Columbia University. An amateur boxer, Salah is an advisory board member for the Haymakers For Hope charity boxing organization. He lives with his wife and two sons in Brooklyn.
For more information about Voice, go to Voice.com.
About Block.one
Block.one is a global software company specializing in high performance blockchain software. In 2018, it published EOSIO, a free, open-source protocol designed to bring speed, scalability, and ease of use to the secure and transparent fundamentals of distributed databases. Block.one’s social platform Voice aims to redefine social media by cultivating creation, sharing, discovery and promotion of content by real users. Block.one’s venture capital arm, EOS VC, invests in companies, projects, and developers around the world leveraging EOSIO technology.
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media@block.one
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