Voice, a blockchain-based social media platform announced last year, has announced the appointment of Forbes’ global Chief Digital Officer, Salah Zalatimo, as Chief Executive Officer.
Zalatimo joined Forbes in 2015 following the acquisition of his startup, Camerama, by the company. During his five year stint at Forbes, he led the company’s successful digital transformation and saw some major milestones, including the doubling of its audience to over 110 million monthly users, making it a global top 100 website by traffic.
He will take over the position as Voice CEO on January 20. Welcoming him to Voice, Brendan Blumer, Block.one CEO, said that Zalatimo is uniquely qualified to lead Voice with his extensive experience in creating state-of-the-art content monetization and publishing tools.
“As users enter an era of being rewarded for their contributions to social networks, we believe it’s also important to focus on equipping creators with tools used by the world’s most successful journalists,” Blumer added.
In June, EOS developer Block.One unveiled Voice with the objective of encouraging content creation, sharing, discovery, and promotion by real users, not bots and fake accounts.
Voice will add verified identity to encourage real content from real people. In addition, blockchain technology will ensure transparency and provable data integrity. The platform will reward Voice tokens to users for different forms of engagement. Importantly, it will create “a new economic model as opposed to the traditional, where selling personal data and targeted ads come at the expense of users,” the company said.
“Blockchain is becoming a clear driver of digital media product innovation, and Voice’s tokenized design presents a fundamentally better way of empowering content creators and participants; a new generation of decentralized media is on the horizon. I am delighted to be a part of this effort,” Zalatimo said.
Voice is slated to launch a public beta on February 14, 2020.
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