External links
- Andy Hobsbawm at TED
Andrew John Hobsbawm (born 12 June 1963) [1] is an entrepreneur, writer and musician from London, England. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] He co-founded Online Magic, a British new media company, which was acquired by Omnicom in 1997. [1] Hobsbawm is also a founder of EVRYTHNG and Do The Green Thing. [6] [7] [8] [9]
He is a member of the British Interactive Media Association’s Digital Hall of Fame. [10] [11]
Andy Hobsbawm is the son of the historian Eric Hobsbawm and Marlene Hobsbawm (née Schwartz) in London, England. [12] Hobsbawm attended sixth form college in Montreal, Canada, but did not go on to university to obtain a degree. [13] [14] He joined a rock band, Tin Gods, after leaving school. [14]
While playing with Tin Gods, Hobsbawm responded to a newspaper ad soliciting entrepreneurs, which led to a position at magazine publisher APT Data. [14] During his tenure there, Hobsbawm formed Internet Publishing with Eamonn Wilmott to develop the first European e-zine, PowerPC News. [1] [14] [15] [16]
Hobsbawm and Wilmott co-founded Online Magic, a leading British new media company in 1995. [1] [17] Online Magic became the first international web agency and developed the first website that covered a British general election, GE97. [11] [15] [16] [18] [19] Omnicom’s Agency.com invested in Online Magic in 1997 and acquired it in 1998. [20] Hobsbawm, who had served as president of Online Magic, was appointed Agency.com’s chief creative officer for Europe. [21] [22] Hobsbawm became chairman of Agency.com Europe in 2004. He left the company in 2009. [23]
In 2007, Hobsbawm co-founded Do The Green Thing, a social networking site for encouraging people to lead greener lives, with Naresh Ramchandani. [7] [24] [25] In 2008, Hobsbawm presented Do The Green Thing at TED in Monterey, California. [26] His lecture was later included as a TEDTalk. [27]
In 2011, Hobsbawm co-founded EVRYTHNG, a Web of Things software company. [9] [28] [29] [30]
Hobsbawm has written articles for Forbes , the Financial Times and The Independent . [5] [31] [32] He was also a weekly columnist on the new economy for the Financial Times. [1] [5] [6] [31] He is a co-author of The Economist’s Brands and Branding ( ISBN 1576603504). [31] [33]
Hobsbawm has also written three white papers, entitled "10 years on: The State of the Internet a Decade after Mosaic", "Small is the Next Big Thing: The Size and Shape of Commerce and Culture" and "Product Relationship Management: Turning physical products into owned digital media." [34] [35] [36]
Andy Hobsbawm, 36
In 1962 he married again, this time to Marlene Schwarz, of Austrian descent. They moved to Hampstead and bought a small second home in Wales. They had two children, Andrew and Julia.
