Niall Kennedy

Technology strategy and development leadership for Fortune 500 clients and high-growth Internet startups. Specialize in Internet ecosystems of search discovery, social media, connected devices, and browser performance on desktop and mobile. Modernizing publishing platforms for the modern, distributed Web. I rewrite businesses for the digital era through core planning, strategic partnerships, targeted acquisitions, and modern web development techniques.

Enable access to web feeds (RSS and Atom) through standardized platform serving 30+ internal clients including Windows Live Hotmail, Spaces, Messenger, and Live.com. Write detailed specifications based on the current state of content publishing while working with client teams towards final product integration. Partner with development manager to scale and optimize content storage and delivery.

Create new features and drive community adoption in the blog search sector by giving our customers what they want. I organized the first two Web Spam Squashing Summits as part of my work keeping bad data out of the bursting Technorati index. I was part of an early team at Technorati changing the way searchers and publishers interact with an ever-changing search index.

I managed all non-advertising inbound traffic referrals including search engines, affiliates, cobrands, and APIs integrators. I was product lead on NexTag feed syndication efforts, turning millions of data objects into syndicated web feeds for merchants and potential buyers. I helped launch the site's mortgage and travel vertical search marketing programs.

Handled new data gathering initiatives and reporting services for Callan Associates, an institutional investment consulting firm located in San Francisco. I gathered data, profiled, and researched companies in the venture capital, hedge fund, and private real estate investment industries. I wrote code in Java using Tomcat, XHTML, CSS and a bit of automated PDF workflow.

Sold premium sporting goods online and offline. My focus was providing professional quality baseball, soccer, and basketball goods including exclusive products previously available only to Major League Baseball. Buyers could purchase the entire kit worn by Mike Piazza or Ronaldo from his shoes to his glove. The site integrated tightly with online marketplaces such as eBay, zShops, and Half.com to complement our offline sales efforts in the southern California region.

First employee hire while the company was focused on the computer hardware shopping comparison category. Helped develop pricing algorithms to determine shipping and tax based on a user's ZIP code and remove more uncertainty from the early days of online shopping. Expanded the shopping comparison site from one to four categories -- computers, electronics, movies, and music -- after developing the necessary content structure, feeds, and partnerships.