#21 Pioneering the Social Media Frontier with Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO of Nuzzel

The godfather of social media, Jonathan Abrams, joins us on this episode of Ambition Today. He is now the founder & CEO of Nuzzel, a new platform to discover the top news from your friends and influencers. Letting users cut through the muddle of content on social media to emphasize only their most relevant content. Previously, Jonathan has founded several other companies; Socializr, HotLinks, Founder's Den and most notably Friendster. He is also a top-rated mentor at The Founder Institute and has been extensively involved in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial community for over ten years. After growing up in Canada and working for Nortel he became an employee at Netscape during it's prime. Abrams went on to found Friendster in 2002 before the wider adoption of, at the time newcomers; MySpace (2003), Hi5 (2003), Facebook (2004) and other social networking sites. Friendster was one of the first of these sites to attain over 1 million members. In 2012, Abrams recognized a fallacy in the market of social news readers, when the programs of the time weren’t what he was looking for: fast, easy-to-use, and social. Today Jonathan talks about his solution to this problem with his new company Nuzzel, his appearance on Chelsea on Netflix, and much more: + Navigating the seemingly minuscule Canadian computer science marketplace. + Being a first-time entrepreneur during the dot-com boom and bust. + How Friendster competed with Facebook in the developing market of social media. + Using social curation to launch Nuzzel. + Trying to reach a wide audience with relevant information. + The future of Nuzzel. + Why e-mail remains king in the world of social media. + Surviving in Silicon Valley by not getting ahead of yourself. + The future of the social landscape. Ambition Today Question of the Day™: "What does Ambition mean to you and how do you satisfy your personal ambition each day?" ========== Follow Kevin Siskar on Twitter: twitter.com/TheSiskar Follow Kevin Siskar on Instagram: instagram.com/thesiskar Follow Kevin Siskar on Facebook: facebook.com/kevin.siskar Add Kevin Siskar on Snapchat: snapchat.com/add/krsiskar Visit Ambition Today on the Web: www.siskar.co/ambitiontoday Kevin Siskar brings you ambitious entrepreneurs inspired by Tim Ferriss, Entrepreneur on Fire, NPR, HBR, TED Radio Hour, the StartUp podcast, Pat Flynn, Tony Robbins, The Uncertain Hour, Bigger Pockets, Art of Charm, Dave Ramsey, Planet Money, Jocko Podcast, EntreLeadership, Zigler, APM Marketplace, Mixergy, Seth Godin, #AskGaryVee, Monocle 24 and The $100 MBA Show with Omar Zenhom, and Casey Neistat. Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS (apple.co/1NRRPzL), on Google Play Music (goo.gl/LmmciJ), or on Stitcher for Android (bit.ly/1Rn01dy).