Jemma Brackebush of Digiday profiles Salah Zalatino, vice president of product development of Forbes, about how data drives everything at the business magazine’s operations.
Brackebush writes, “Zalatimo has found the perfect analogy: that of building a house. ‘I’m the architect of all technology products at Forbes,’ said Zalatimo, who’s responsible for designing and controlling the user experience, layout and design of all Forbes’ tech products, across website, mobile and video. He just doesn’t ‘pick up the hammer and nails and build the products.’
“Zalatimo is relatively fresh to the media company. His background includes management consultancy for Sony and helping traditional media companies transition to digital. But after 12 years in the corporate world, he returned to Columbia University for an MBA (his undergrad was in economics and operation research) before creating his own products and companies. In 2014, his second startup, a private photo-sharing app called Camerama, was about to enter its second round of sourcing funding when it was discovered by Forbes’ chief product officer. By 2015, the app was snapped up by Forbes and Zalatimo was in charge of developing it into ForbesConnect, a social networking and conference app.
“Zalatimo said while Forbes is transitioning from a traditional media company to a tech-driven company, it creates his biggest challenges, including determining how fast the website’s page loads, creating a seamless user experience, and how intelligent its recommendations algorithms are. ‘Data is at the core of how we make decisions,’ he said.”
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