SILICON VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mode Media, the 7th largest desktop and the 10th largest overall U.S. media property with 139 million monthly unique users in the U.S. with 406 million monthly active users, today announced the appointment of John C. Small as senior vice president of corporate development. Small joins Mode Media six months after the launch of the company’s new Mode social platform, Mode.com, which has seen significant growth to 25 million monthly unique users and 1 billion video views to date in the U.S.
“John will be a great addition to Mode, as he led GLG’s technology, media and telecom teams through major tech IPOs and investments and has been immersed in the digital platforms, video and native ads space for the last few years,” said Samir Arora, Mode Media CEO and founder. “We’re seeing a significant market acceleration in our native content and video products, and John’s wealth of experience in corporate development, M&A and Wall Street will help us take Mode Media to the next level.”
Small has more than 20 years of experience on Wall Street in technology, media and telecom, in major IPOs, public and private investments and M&A during his career.
Small was the senior asset manager and president at GLG Partners, specializing in telecom, media, technology and renewal energy for public and private investments, from 2000 to 2011. He began his career at the investment bank Morgan Stanley and also spent a number of years at Ulysses Management and Odyssey Partners.
John is transitioning to Mode Media after four years at Viggle, Inc., where he was hired as executive vice president of strategy and corporate development and left as chief financial officer.
“Media consumption has drastically shifted, as digital media in social feeds have become the primary source of entertainment and information in our connected society. Mode has been a key driver of this change—first by creating the #1 lifestyle vertical media company ‘Glam’ with premium display ads and transforming it into a multi-channel, owned social platform for native content and video streaming,” said Small. “I am excited at the opportunity to join Samir and the team and help lead the largest and only private company in the Top 10 media properties in the U.S.”
About Mode Media
Mode Media was founded in Silicon Valley in 2004 with a simple, yet powerful idea—to help people discover relevant content by combining the power of human curation of premium content with technology that distributes the right content to the right people at the right time. Today, Mode Media is building the largest independent premium video and content platform for creators powered by distribution and streaming technology that delivers targeted native videos, content and branded entertainment at scale in real-time.
Mode.com is a social platform where creators can upload videos and build content stories that are curated by professionals and distributed in user feeds—personalized by their interests and social actions from creators and channels they follow. Unlike traditional media that employ large numbers of people to produce hopefully amazing content without a captive audience online, Mode is a new ecosystem model (like YouTube, Vimeo, & Netflix) that matches 10,000+ creators that continually and on-demand create original content with distribution to the captive audience on the Mode platform. Original videos, content and branded entertainment are produced by these independent creators and by Mode Studios, the creator of the hyper-viral series “100 Years” with over 250 million views in 2016. Mode’s machine-learning algorithms test all videos and content for engagement and viral lift in real-time to find the right audience to deliver programmed views in distributed user feeds.
Mode has grown from zero to 25 million unique users in six months, since launch in April 2016 (comScore). Mode’s streaming platform has grown from zero to 20 million viewers and crossed over 1 billion streamed video views in September 2015.
Mode Media is the 7th largest desktop and the 10th largest media property in the U.S. Top 10 Media Properties reaching 139 million unique users a month (comScore). Mode.com is a consumer social platform for curated content discovery with native in-feed distribution and streaming videos. For additional information regarding Mode Media, visit http://corp.mode.com/
