YouMob

YouMob is a social website I created with friend Rob Bearman of Hyperfine Software. Our goal was to let anyone gather a mob of people at any website, with or without the owner's permission.

At any time, millions of people surf the web alone. Unlike places in the real world, the web doesn't enable people to interact as they move through it. YouMob taps social and political passions, and gives people a way to communicate, react and vent their feelings anywhere on the web.

During the 2007 congressional hearings of U.S. General Petraeus, the C-SPAN coverage of the event was mobbed, with passionate comments and barbs shared. Other sites have been mobbed by thousands as well. YouMob has had more than 1.2 million views.

YouMob implements unique and useful features. It provides implicit customization of mob listings, a powerful friending system, and beacons - lightweight widgets that promote mobs all around the web. More than 100,000 YouMob beacons are displayed daily on web pages around the world.

Through YouMob and other web projects, Rob and I developed an efficient workflow for designing and building powerful database-backed web applications and UIs. We've also developed innovative, reusable techniques for driving web traffic.

Since finishing YouMob, I've launched an exciting new product for kids.