About
The basics
Rob is a 30-something, Northern geek, who currently lives with his wife in Crystal Palace in South-East London (why wouldn’t you want to live somewhere that has it’s own dinosaurs?).
Londonist
In 2004 Rob founded and edited the successful capital-centric blog Londonist.com. Born out of a frustration with a lack of independent local media, Londonist delivered news and comment across every aspect of London life. What started as a part-time project became a full time vocation after the site won a Guardian UK Blog award after just three months. Over the next couple of years Londonist was nominated for two Bloggies; appeared in Newsweek magazine; featured on CNN numerous times; and was featured in a variety of newspapers including The Guardian, The Times, and the Evening Standard. In October 2006 the site placed eighth in a list of the UK’s 50 most influential bloggers.
Yahoo
In 2006 Rob left Londonist behind (handing it over to the formidably dedicated and talented team who edit it today) to take on the challenge of editing Yahoo’s UK News Site. As well as directing the editorial tone and content of the site on a day-to-day basis, he also managed the redesign and restructure of the news portal from a traditional, static news aggregation site to a more accessible and usable platform that encouraged interaction and engagement from its audience. In December 2006 Nielsen rated the site as having the highest aggregate unique audience across UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
This led to a number of months working on product strategy and community development on a user-generated, local reviews project within Yahoo, during which Rob developed community guidelines, branding elements, marketing communications, user interface and a launch strategy for the pan-European project.
Qype
Rob left Yahoo in the Summer of 2007 to oversee the UK launch of the local reviews and recommendations site Qype. As Community and Development Manager Rob’s day-to-day role involved defining and developing a community growth strategy that involved creating a clear identity for the site, approaching an initial audience of key influencers, curating and surfacing user-generated content, and developing a presence on external networks.
Qype’s connection to real-world locations allowed Rob to take user-engagement strategies outside the online environment, organising a unique series of experiential events with SME’s, agencies, and brands including Virgin, JamieOliver.com, and Windows Mobile. Unique and exclusive real-world experiences not only helped to build user loyalty and strengthen the online relationships amongst the userbase; they also helped demonstrate Qype’s commercial viability to small business owners.
In the Spring of 2010, Qype’s network grew to cover a number of overseas markets including France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Brazil and Ireland. At the time of his departure in September 2010 Rob was managing community development across each of these markets, supervising a team of community managers both in the UK and abroad.
Other work
Rob’s interest in design, usability, and online culture has led him to write for a number of print publications such as Blueprint, Grafik, New Media Age and Marketing Week.
Rob has contributed to the daily e-magazine Urban Junkies, and was Contributing Editor of the weekly email culture magazine Flavorpill. He also occasionally writes about new media and the technology industry for The Hospital Club.
In 2006 Rob co-wrote The London Collection, an alternative guide book to London. One newspaper called it “No ordinary miscellany…A joy,” while another was slightly less complimentary: “Daft but diverting bog literature.”