Andrew Weinreich

Andrew Weinreich

Andrew Weinreich
Residence Brooklyn, New York, USA
Nationality United States
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania
Fordham University

Andrew Weinreich is an American serial entrepreneur. He is a pioneer in the field of social networking and has been starting and building businesses since 1997.[1][2]

Education & career

Andrew Weinreich graduated cum laude with a B.A. in American History from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. He also holds a J.D. from Fordham University.[3]

After graduating law school, Weinreich practiced law as General Counsel and served as Vice President for the Hertz Technology Group. He also worked a financial analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co.[4]

Weinreich has served as Chairman of Xtify, Founder and Chairman of MeetMoi LLC, Director of AskIt Systems, Director of Drop.io, Inc., Chairman of Board of Organic Network Inc., and Director of Organic Network Inc.[5] He has also served as Member of Advisory Board at Visible Path Corporation[6] and at SNAP Interactive, Inc. since September 2012.[7]

Entrepreneurship

SixDegrees

In 1997, Andrew Weinreich launched SixDegrees.[8] The online company was the first of its kind to allow users to identify relationships with people they know and then query for people they didn’t know through established connections, based upon the Six degrees of separation theory by Stanley Milgram.[9] Though other services existed with similar features, SixDegrees was the first social media network to allow users to create a profile, show their friends list, and search through their friends list.[10] Weinreich authored the first patent on social networking, “Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and system,” commonly known as the Six Degrees patent, which secured the social media network's software code.[11] At its height, SixDegrees had close to 100 employees and 3,500,000 fully registered members.[12] The company sold to YouthStream Media Networks in 1999 for $125 million.[13] The site closed in 2000.[14] Weinreich later said, in reference to SixDegrees preceding the advent of widespread digital photography,[15] "We had board meetings where we would discuss how to get people to send in their pictures and scan them in. The real difference in 2002 was that by then people had digital cameras."[16]

MeetMoi

In February 2006, Weinreich co-founded MeetMoi with Jeremy Levy. MeetMoi offers “the first location-based mobile dating service,”[17] combining Xtify's persistent location discovery and push notification technology.[18][19] The site currently has over 3 million users.[20] When asked about MeetMoi's push-notification based platform, Weinreich responded, “There is intelligence in the cloud and it should follow you wherever you want to be followed.”[21]

Xtify

In 2008, Andrew Weinreich and Jeremy Levy spun off the persistent tracking technologies of MeetMoi into a separate company called Xtify. Xtify was "the first geo-notification API that powers 'persistent location,' allowing a user’s location to be extracted from a mobile device on a periodic and continuous basis."[22] Xtify was acquired by IBM on October 3, 2013.[23]

I Stand For

In 2003, Weinreich started I Stand For, Inc., a technology solution to transfer political fundraising online with content management and community solutions.[24] He said about the venture: "My vision five years ago was to revolutionize social networking (...) Now, it’s to revolutionize building member and constituent bases for political campaigns, not-for-profit organizations and other member based businesses.”[25] He sold the company in February 2006.[26]

Joltage

In 2001, Weinreich founded Joltage, an infrastructure services business devoted to building out a global network of wifi hotspots.[27] The company was considered "slightly ahead of its time,"[28] hoping to "spread Wi-Fi's footprint one base at a time to neighborhoods, office parks and campuses."[29] Joltage was forced to shut down in 2003 when the company ran out of funding.[30]

Patents

The ‘Six Degrees Patent,’[31] invented by Andrew Weinreich et al., is considered the definitive patent covering social networking.[32] The patent defined a social network as the ability to see the people you do not know through the people you do know, made possible by indexing people's relationships in a single database.[33]

The ‘Location-based services platform patent,’[34] invented by Andrew Weinreich et al., is a platform providing location-based services and location data to third-party service providers, currently utilized by Xtify.[35][36]

References

  1. ↑ Rose, David. "What are the best examples of good tech companies that were destroyed after being acquired?".
  2. ↑ "Andrew Weinreich Executive Profile". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  3. ↑ "Speak Bio: Andrew Weinreich". 2006. Retrieved November 6, 2006.
  4. ↑ "Andrew Weinreich Executive Profile". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  5. ↑ "Andrew Weinreich Executive Profile". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  6. ↑ "Andrew Weinreich Executive Profile". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  7. ↑ "SNAP Interactive Appoints Jerry King and Andrew Weinreich to Advisory Board". Citybizlist.
  8. ↑ Goble, Gordon (2012-09-06). "The History of Social Networking".
  9. ↑ Riordan, Teresa (2003-12-01). "Idea for Online Networking Brings Two Entrepreneurs Together". The New York Times.
  10. ↑ Barker, Melissa (2012). "10". Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach (1st ed.). Cengage Learning.
  11. ↑ Riordan, Teresa (2003-12-01). "Idea for Online Networking Brings Two Entrepreneurs Together". The New York Times.
  12. ↑ Kirkpatrick, David (2011). The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. Simon & Schuster.
  13. ↑ Angwin, Julia (2009). Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America. Random House. p. 52.
  14. ↑ Barker, Melissa (2012). "10". Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach (1st ed.). Cengage Learning.
  15. ↑ Kirkpatrick, David (2011). The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. Simon & Schuster.
  16. ↑ Angwin, Julia (2009). Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America. Random House. p. 52.
  17. ↑ Maykowski, Alexander (2013-09-26). "25 New York Internet Pioneers – Then and Now". Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  18. ↑ Smith, Kevin (24 October 2012). "Check Out MeetMoi, The Dating App That Has Quietly Reached 3 Million Users".
  19. ↑ Boyd Myers, Courtney (30 July 2011). "Where are they now? New York City’s Dot Com Entrepreneurs: Part One".
  20. ↑ Smith, Kevin (24 October 2012). "Check Out MeetMoi, The Dating App That Has Quietly Reached 3 Million Users".
  21. ↑ Tsotsis, Alexia (3 August 2010). "Push Notifications Meet Dating: meetMoi NOW Alerts You When Matches Are Nearby".
  22. ↑ Boyd Myers, Courtney (30 July 2011). "Where are they now? New York City’s Dot Com Entrepreneurs: Part One".
  23. ↑ "IBM Acquires Xtify to Help Digital Marketers Reach Mobile Customers" (Press release). Armonk, NY: IBM. 2013-10-03. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  24. ↑ "Andrew Weinreich". TEDx Wall Street.
  25. ↑ "Weinreich Launches Political ASP". theWHIR.com.
  26. ↑ Boyd Myers, Courtney (July 11, 2011). "Where are they now? New York City’s Dot Com Entrepreneurs".
  27. ↑ Metz, Cade (April 8, 2002). "Would You Like Wireless Access with That?". PC Magazine.
  28. ↑ Surden, Esther (28 February 2012). "Web entrepreneur: 'If people don't think you are crazy, you are probably not thinking big enough'".
  29. ↑ Boutin, Paul (28 March 2002). "Why Dial Up If You Can Wi-Fi?". Wired.
  30. ↑ Shim, Richard (28 February 2003). "Start-up Joltage unplugs Wi-Fi service".
  31. ↑ US patent US6175831, Andrew P. Weinreich, "Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and system", published 2001-01-16, issued 2001-01-16
  32. ↑ Riordan, Teresa (December 1, 2003). "Idea for Online Networking Brings Two Entrepreneurs Together". The New York Times.
  33. ↑ "United States Patent 6,175,831". 2001-01-16.
  34. ↑ US patent US8447332, Andrew P. Weinreich, "Location-based services platform", published 2013-05-21, issued 2001-01-16
  35. ↑ "Patent Issued for Location-Based Services Platform". Telecommunications Weekly. 5 June 2013.
  36. ↑ "U.S. Patents Awarded to Inventors in New York". 23 May 2013.
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