Ali Aydar
Encyclopedia
Ali Aydar is a computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He is currently the chief executive officer
at Sporcle
.
He is best known as an early employee and key technical contributor at the original Napster
, the file-sharing service created by Shawn Fanning
in 1999, and at SNOCAP
, the digital rights
and content management startup
Fanning founded after Napster. He was also chief operating officer
of imeem
, which acquired SNOCAP in 2008.
Aydar's experiences working at Napster were documented in two books: Joseph Menn's definitive Napster biography, All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster, and Steve Knopper's Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.
and grew up in Napoleon, Michigan
. In high school
, he ran a Bulletin Board System
by the name of "Awesome Fred's BBS." After high school
, he attended Carnegie Mellon University
, where he majored in mathematics
and computer science
. While there, Aydar was a contributor to the Free Internet Chess Server
, an open-source project that enabled people to play online chess for free. This experience led to Aydar co-founding online chess startup chess.net with John Fanning
, the uncle of Napster creator Shawn Fanning, in 1996.
. Aydar bought Fanning his first book on programming in C++
, the language he would use two years later to build the Napster file-sharing software.
, where he worked as a banker. In late 1998, Shawn Fanning contacted Aydar via instant messenger to tell him about a software application he was writing that would enable people to share music. Fanning was then a freshman at Northeastern University.
In August 1999, Aydar moved to California
's Silicon Valley
to work for a startup. Within weeks, he was recruited to join Napster. He joined in September 1999, becoming its first non-founding employee.
Initially, Aydar was an individual contributor to Napster's engineering team. Eventually, he moved into a management role as Napster's senior director of technology, where he was responsible for managing the development of Napster's next-generation legal service.
Aydar authored Napster’s search engine
software, which supported the millions of search queries Napster users made every day. At that time, Napster was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet; at its peak, the service had over 85 million registered user
s and 2 million simultaneous users around the world. Aydar’s server software infrastructure successfully scaled to handle the exponential increase in Napster search queries, helping support Napster’s unprecedented growth.
Following Napster's shutdown and subsequent bankruptcy
, Aydar served as an advisor to the management team of software company Roxio
during its 2003 acquisition of music service Pressplay
.
and Ron Conway
at SNOCAP, the digital rights and content management startup Fanning founded after Napster's collapse. A significant number of its employees were people who had worked for Napster; an August 2005 profile in TIME
magazine noted that "27% of SNOCAP's employees are Napster veterans."
Aydar served as SNOCAP's chief operating officer from the company's inception through its acquisition by imeem in 2008, and for a year also served as its interim CEO. He co-invented SNOCAP's digital registry and MyStore technologies. While at SNOCAP, he also completed an MBA from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley
on a part-time basis.
from 2003 until 2007. imeem was acquired by MySpace
in December 2009.
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
at Sporcle
Sporcle
Sporcle is a trivia quiz website launched in July 2007. According to the website's founder Matt Ramme, the name Sporcle is inspired by the word 'oracle'...
.
He is best known as an early employee and key technical contributor at the original Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
, the file-sharing service created by Shawn Fanning
Shawn Fanning
Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platforms, in 1998. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine...
in 1999, and at SNOCAP
SNOCAP
BackgroundThe company was founded by Shawn Fanning , Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway. Other SNOCAP employees included music lawyer Christian Castle, the company's first General Counsel, and Ali Aydar, the company's Chief Operating Officer, who joined imeem after its acquisition of SNOCAP in April...
, the digital rights
Digital rights
The term digital rights describes the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network...
and content management startup
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
Fanning founded after Napster. He was also chief operating officer
Chief operating officer
A Chief Operating Officer or Director of Operations can be one of the highest-ranking executives in an organization and comprises part of the "C-Suite"...
of imeem
Imeem
The online service imeem was a social media web site where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos...
, which acquired SNOCAP in 2008.
Aydar's experiences working at Napster were documented in two books: Joseph Menn's definitive Napster biography, All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster, and Steve Knopper's Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.
Early life
Ali Aydar was born in Richmond, VirginiaRichmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
and grew up in Napoleon, Michigan
Napoleon, Michigan
Napoleon is an unincorporated community in Napoleon Township of Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also a Census-designated place for statistical purposes and without any legal status as an incorporated municipality...
. In high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, he ran a Bulletin Board System
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
by the name of "Awesome Fred's BBS." After high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, he attended Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, where he majored in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. While there, Aydar was a contributor to the Free Internet Chess Server
Free Internet Chess Server
The Free Internet Chess Server is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organised as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club , after that site began charging for membership.-History:...
, an open-source project that enabled people to play online chess for free. This experience led to Aydar co-founding online chess startup chess.net with John Fanning
John Fanning
John Fanning was the Founding Chairman and CEO of Napster. He founded the company with his nephew Shawn Fanning. He owned 70% of the company and represented the founders on the board of directors...
, the uncle of Napster creator Shawn Fanning, in 1996.
Career
While working at chess.net, Aydar first met Fanning's then 15-year old nephew, Shawn. In All the Rave, Joseph Menn notes that Shawn interned for chess.net in the summer of 1997, sleeping on a couch in the living room. That summer, Aydar and the other chess.net employees became close with the younger Fanning, who was just learning computer programmingComputer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
. Aydar bought Fanning his first book on programming in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, the language he would use two years later to build the Napster file-sharing software.
Napster
After leaving chess.net, Aydar moved to ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where he worked as a banker. In late 1998, Shawn Fanning contacted Aydar via instant messenger to tell him about a software application he was writing that would enable people to share music. Fanning was then a freshman at Northeastern University.
In August 1999, Aydar moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
's Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
to work for a startup. Within weeks, he was recruited to join Napster. He joined in September 1999, becoming its first non-founding employee.
Initially, Aydar was an individual contributor to Napster's engineering team. Eventually, he moved into a management role as Napster's senior director of technology, where he was responsible for managing the development of Napster's next-generation legal service.
Aydar authored Napster’s search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
software, which supported the millions of search queries Napster users made every day. At that time, Napster was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet; at its peak, the service had over 85 million registered user
Registered user
A registered user is one who uses a program or a website and provides his/her credentials, effectively proving his/her identity.-Technical differences:...
s and 2 million simultaneous users around the world. Aydar’s server software infrastructure successfully scaled to handle the exponential increase in Napster search queries, helping support Napster’s unprecedented growth.
Following Napster's shutdown and subsequent bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, Aydar served as an advisor to the management team of software company Roxio
Roxio
Roxio is a division and brand of Sonic Solutions . Roxio branded products are sold online, through over 15,000 retail outlets, to organizations through volume license agreements and pre-loaded onto OEM PC's and devices...
during its 2003 acquisition of music service Pressplay
Pressplay
Pressplay was the name of an online music store from 2002 - 2003 created as a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. The two record labels provided music via subscription for pressplay along with BMG, EMI, Warner Music Group and various independent labels. It was...
.
SNOCAP
In June 2003, Aydar joined Shawn Fanning, Jordan MendelsonJordan Mendelson
Jordan Mendelson was the Chief Architect of the original Napster from 1999 to 2002. After Napster, Mendelson and Shawn Fanning founded Snocap in 2002. Jordan Mendelson served as Founder and Chief Architect of Snocap for five years, leaving in 2007 to develop a new start-up...
and Ron Conway
Ron Conway
Ron Conway is an American angel investor, often described as one of the "super angels". Conway is recognized as a strong networker and is based in Silicon Valley.-Early career:...
at SNOCAP, the digital rights and content management startup Fanning founded after Napster's collapse. A significant number of its employees were people who had worked for Napster; an August 2005 profile in TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine noted that "27% of SNOCAP's employees are Napster veterans."
Aydar served as SNOCAP's chief operating officer from the company's inception through its acquisition by imeem in 2008, and for a year also served as its interim CEO. He co-invented SNOCAP's digital registry and MyStore technologies. While at SNOCAP, he also completed an MBA from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
on a part-time basis.
imeem
Aydar joined imeem as part of its acquisition of SNOCAP in April 2008, and served as the company's chief operating officer. He was an early advisor to imeem, serving on its board of directorsBoard of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
from 2003 until 2007. imeem was acquired by MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
in December 2009.
External links
- MP3.com Q&A with SNOCAP COO, Ali Aydar
- Newsweek: YouTube's Copyright Crackdown: includes quotes from Aydar and discusses SNOCAP's technology
- San Francisco Chronicle article about SNOCAP's launch
- The Hook article on SNOCAP: "Never Mind the iTunes, It's Snocap"
- Written Testimony of Ali Aydar, COO, SNOCAP, Inc., Before the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee, 9/28/05"
- TIME: Meet the Napster (October 2000 cover story on Shawn Fanning & Napster
- Newsweek: The Noisy War Over Napster (June 2000 cover story on Shawn Fanning & Napster