Whom You Know: MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Tatiana S. Platt, Internet business executive and entrepreneur

Monday, August 3, 2009

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Tatiana S. Platt, Internet business executive and entrepreneur

Tatiana S. Platt is an Internet business executive and entrepreneur. She is CEO and co-founder of FameGame.com, a social entertainment web site chronicling the movers and shakers of New York City. Tatiana has become a key voice in the online industry, working to shape the interactive policy debate in the U.S. and overseas, and also serves as a brand consultant to new media companies.

Before embarking on her Fame Game venture, Tatiana was Chief Trust Officer and Senior Vice President at America Online, Inc. In her 12 years at AOL, she spearheaded initiatives to ensure that AOL fulfilled its commitment to consumers as an "Integrity Brand Leader", and that all AOL-owned Web properties included community, privacy, and safety elements. She was responsible for setting internal strategy for various AOL businesses in areas such as product development, online programming, e-commerce, advertising, and graphics review. She has pioneered the development of consumer safeguards on the Internet and Web 2.0 standards on social networking, rating, and labeling systems. While at AOL, she regularly testified before the U.S. Senate and the Federal Trade Commission.

Before joining AOL, Tatiana was Executive Vice President of Parvus International Inc., a business intelligence firm where she had operational management responsibility for the company's domestic and international businesses. She has extensive experience with the federal government and foreign policy agencies, and also worked abroad for Intercontinental Hotel Corporation in sales and marketing.

Tatiana is an active philanthropist, personally and professionally, and donates her time and efforts to several nonprofit organizations. She serves on the boards of Best Buddies International, The Many Hats Institute, the Byrd Hoffman Foundation/Watermill Center, and Eyebeam. She has lived and traveled all over the world, and speaks six languages. Whom You Know is so pleased to present her as our latest Mover and Shaker!

Peachy Deegan interviewed Tatiana S. Platt for Whom You Know.

Peachy Deegan: What inspired you to start Fame Game?
Tatiana S. Platt: I saw a void in the marketplace that no one was acting on at the time. Since Fame Game launched, several other sites have come around like Cityfile, and most recently Mediaite. They all seek to profile New York movers and shakers in their own way, and provide some kind of hierarchy to it all. From the beginning, though, Fame Game has been tracking a much larger database of some 180,000+ people, and we have sought to keep it light hearted - it is after all just a game.

What is the history of Fame Game?
Fame Game was launched in August 2007 after I got together with my two co-founders, Jose Serrano and Seth Aylmer. At the time, the two of them were playing around with an algorithm to track and rank the "value" of fame according to people's profile in the media. I had the idea to create a sort of people-pedia (a la wikipedia) on New York. We joined forces and launched a social networking grid of New York society which has become what Fame Game is today. Fame Game is powered by our proprietary web crawlers that troll the web and populate the site with automated feeds, some 5+ years worth of data at this point.

Whom You Know loves Fame Game and has noticed you have referred to a couple of our Movers and Shakers, Tiffany Koury and Steven Rosen. How do you define mover and shaker? (Whom You Know defines it: Mover and Shaker (noun): A person who pursues excellence in their field according to popular public opinion and to Peachy Deegan, and has a connection to Manhattan!)
Fame Game defines Movers and Shakers as people who are on the rise in New York circles. We publish a weekly list of 30 people whose rank has risen with the highest velocity in the prior week in six categories: Society +Philanthropy, Entertainment, Fashion, Business, Arts, and Media. See www.famegame.com/moversandshakers

What do you think makes a brand successful?
A brand has to stand for something and have a recognizable product. And it must be trusted. Whether it's Coca Cola, Apple, Amazon, or Colgate, those are all successful brands that represent excellence in their class and consumers trust them. Fame Game has attained a level of recognition among New Yorkers that we couldn't have foreseen even if we had hired the best PR firm. We've been very lucky to have gotten some good buzz early on that catapulted us to the kind of traffic numbers we see today. Fairly unheard of for such a small start-up that had no seed money to speak of. And our investment in SEO (search engine optimization) has positioned us to be on the first page of Google search results for most of the people on our site. This has led to people turning to us as a trusted reference resource and aggregator. Of course, we still have a lot of work to do on the site to become a truly successful brand - we are taking it one day at a time!

What or who has had the most influence on your pursuit of excellence?
Bob Pittman, my former boss and good friend. My husband, Campion, and my 6-month old son, Fox.

What is your favorite place to be in Manhattan?
At home in Soho with good friends

What is your favorite shop in Manhattan?
Roberto Cavalli on Madison

What is your favorite drink?
Starbucks Venti Coffee Light Frappucino

What is your favorite restaurant in Manhattan?
In summer, Barolo in the back garden area. In winter, La Esquina.

What is your favorite Manhattan book?
Jay McInerney's new collection of short stories, "How It Ended"

What has been your best Manhattan athletic experience?
Yoga at Virayoga with Elena Brower

What is your favorite thing to do in Manhattan that you can do nowhere else?
Ice skating in Central Park with my husband (Campion was a draft pick hockey player when he was in college). And flower shopping at 6am at the markets on 28th Street.

What has been your best Manhattan art or music experience?
The MOMA Party in the Garden

What do you think is most underrated and overrated here?
Underrated: the subway. Overrated: super expensive restaurants.

Other than Movers and Shakers of course, what is your favorite Whom You Know column and what do you like about it?
Chacha Peachy! I think it's a great idea!

What else should Whom You Know readers know about you?
My life is not all that glamorous! I work hard 24x7 practically (such is the Internet world), I travel, I care for my husband and 6-month old son, and sometimes I wonder when I get to have some fun! No matter how much I may try to deny it, I am a workaholic, and I believe that good things only come to people who work hard and keep their nose to the grind stone.

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"It was an honour to be chosen for Movers and Shakers by Peachy Deegan. The questions in the interview were intelligent and insightful and I thoroughly enjoyed answering them. The reaction to the interview has been overwhelmingly positive and has helped bring my art practice to a wider audience."
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Bill Follett
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